


Clavicle Dip

by trashsshi



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Fantasy, Heavy Angst, M/M, Mutual Pining, Political Intrigue, Reincarnation, Romance, Royalty, Tragedy, Witchcraft, star crossed lovers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:42:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24404497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashsshi/pseuds/trashsshi
Summary: Crown Prince Jongin and palace stray Baekhyun are childhood sweethearts. It's when they grow up that it all goes wrong.
Relationships: Byun Baekhyun/Kim Jongin | Kai
Comments: 26
Kudos: 20





	1. The Boy with the Smoke-Smudged Eyes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cherrychoke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherrychoke/gifts), [echolaia](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=echolaia).



> READ THE TAGS. also  
> is it possible for someone to die twice in one fic?  
> shall we find out?

The loggia looks out on the world outside- a world that, with gossamer mist clinging to it like a wispy veil, seems insubstantial to Jongin when compared to the memories that ever surface and take over his senses.

He is astride Sabin, his Friesian stallion, following his beloved. Every gallop hitches him up by the haunches. He keeps his eyes on the back of Baekhyun's head. The sun bounces off Sabin's ebony coat; bounces off Baekhyun's silvery hair.

He has his books open next to Baekhyun's, but he can't concentrate. He blames the spot of ink on the side of Baekhyun's nose. He blames Baekhyun's murmuring as he reads to himself for being so distracting, husky and just a little nasal in all the right amounts. Jongin is distracted, every time. He can't help but reach out to stroke Baekhyun's hair, marvelling; it’s just like spun silver. 

The next flash, Baekhyun is a prince and Jongin, his knight. The clunking clash of wooden swords, hot and cold, push and pull. When they tire of that game they have endless others, a universe of possibilities in that self-contained world built up with the magic of playing pretend, brought alive by their shared secrets. In the garden, Jongin twirls pirouettes and bounces on his toes, for once not concerned with being poised and graceful, because Baekhyun's eyes on him are so mellow and warm, buoying him. Baekhyun's voice, "I love you," Baekhyun's lips where Jongin's collarbones meet, and Jongin's lips where Baekhyun's collarbones meet-

Jongin turns away from the inchoate view, pressing his fists to throbbing temples. There’s something else, not warm like well-loved lips. Cold. Scintillating stone set in metal. Something else nestled, unwelcome in the dip between his collarbones, round and cold like a pebble, like a cuckoo’s egg that has no hope of hatching. 

He wrenches it off, the chain grazing his skin on its way, and drops it over the edge of the loggia. The mist swallows it from sight.

He leans against an elaborately-wrought pillar. Closes his eyes and sees fire. Opens them, and sees fire out of the corner of his eye. Growing, conquering his view the more he wants to look away. He can't look away. It’s everywhere.

All is ash. Rack, ruin and clinker.

Slowly, he makes his way indoors. From the support of one pillar to the next.

"Are you all right, Prince?"

He looks up. King Hujun sits in the alcove, embroiled in rich rugs and plush cushions. He sometimes gets it into his head to come up here for a self-proclaimed breath of fresh air. Evidently, even this morning's fine mist is more chill than he can take upon himself to bear.

"I’m fine. Thank you for your concern, Your Majesty."

Jongin tears his gaze from him, from the lines of stubbornness and age on his face, streaking his hair. Apart from faint bone structure, father and son look nothing alike.

The King doesn’t seem to see the festering storm that is eating Jongin from the inside, and that’s for the best. Jongin is simply waiting, preparing for the right moment. If he’s lucky, he’ll be able to let the storm burst forth without a full-out war.

♛

King Hujun is going to summon court. When he first gets word of it, Jongin isn’t sure whether to attend. If he does, he’ll only be serving himself and his future schemes, but there are days when he feels like his future schemes may never come to fruition. When he is loath even to move out of his chamber, pacing for hours within, his mind a swirling darkness. This is one of those days.

However, on hearing Yoona, his father’s favourite dancing girl, coo through the gap in his door and jangle her anklets with impatient steps, he knows to let her in immediately despite refusing anyone else’s presence over the course of that day. He makes an exception for her because, for one, she doesn’t approach him unless she has something of use to him, they have a mutually beneficial pact; for another, he has to let her in quickly before someone notices that the King’s favourite is visiting his son without his knowledge.

He opens the door and allows her to slip inside. Without a look or word of acknowledgement, he turns his back on her. He doesn’t like how tall she is, how he has to look up at her.

But she has long gleaned this, perceptive as she must be to succeed on her path in life. She settles on the floor by his bed.

Sighing, he deigns to enter his bed. He doesn’t get under the bedclothes. He doesn’t have to take anything off to sleep. He’d already been in a black mood in the morning and hadn’t bothered with ornaments. His robe, the simplest one he owns, sighs against the sheets.

Yoona folds her elbows on the edge of the bed and rests her chin on her arms, blinking up at him with bedroom eyes. Jongin faces her, propped up by the elbow. An outsider looking in would be liable to misunderstand.

“Are you not well today, my Prince?” says Yoona, her voice all dipping cadences and silky undertones. Yoona knows the King is aging. She wants to win similar favour with his son. Protect her position. She’s young and talented. Jongin sympathizes with her, but she misjudges  _ how _ to win him over. It is not that he has never bedded a woman. It is just that he has never wanted to bed anyone else since Baekhyun.

Despite this particular mistake of hers, and despite its persistence, she’s very useful to him. Quick, discreet, loyal. She can tell him the secret fears and speculations, the suppressed opinions of the noblewomen that their own husbands have no hint of. And she has access to men’s circles, too, men in high positions; an access that respectable ladies-in-waiting and even maidservants can’t imagine. So he half-listens to her ask whether she can bring him wine to raise his spirits, or a tonic from the herbalist.

“Why are you here?” he sighs.

“Your father is holding court.”

“I know.”

“It isn’t a mere formality. You’ll be interested in the proceedings.”

Jongin sits up. “Use plain words.”

Yoona drops her gaze, and her arms, to her lap. “It’s about the witch-purging.”

Jongin swallows around the sudden tightness in his throat. He reaches for the dresser next to the bed, wrought in ivory from elephants he felled himself for sport. He traces the ornate lines as though grounding himself in the feel of them under his finger. A carved depiction of a hunting scene, the elephant rearing up, lifting forelegs and trunk, while his entourage raises their weapons. His figure is at their fore, larger than them, more detailed, better equipped, readying his sword for a deadly strike.

Yoona says softly, “I still have the tusk.” Jongin hums. He’d had the dresser made using imperfect stumps from elephants he’d hunted, but there was one truly magnificent tusk. He’d even decided against hilting it or gilding its base. He’d tried giving it to Baekhyun first, but Baekhyun refused to even touch it, petallike mouth trembling. He couldn’t understand Jongin’s thirst for blood, never could. But Jongin had sensed what Baekhyun would never admit: a part of him was fascinated. It drew him to Jongin, like everything else about him. Everytime Jongin went in for the kill, it was an offering, a seduction.

It’s been a while since his last hunt. He has lost interest. It seems such a meaningless, unscrupulous pastime now; almost dishonourable. And yet he’d been lauded for it. Well, now there’s no need for blood sacrifices. Because now, he is godless. His miniature carved version has no expression but for his mouth widely agape in a felling shout.

Jongin opens the drawer and casts his hand about blindly, pulling out a string of pearls and dropping it into Yoona’s raised palms. She cups her hands to receive it, her head bowed. He waves her away.

Once she’s gone, Jongin draws the curtains on the oriel windows. They’re heavy and tapestried, nearly twice as tall as he is, and for a moment he appreciates the difficulty of the attendants every time they have to air his chambers, among who knows how many other daily difficulties. The watery light does nothing to help him feel ready to face the day.

Mechanically, he changes into a more elaborate robe, wine-coloured like all his robes but edged with gold embroidered curlicues. A cinch at his waist, and one at his arm- both gold, set with garnets- and he decides he’s as ready as he’ll ever be. After placing his crown on his head, he calls for his attendants to escort him to court.

♛

Jongin always finds the walk from the entrance of the court, up until his lesser throne next to the King’s, rather tedious. The hall’s vastness on all sides, the cavernous ceiling, and the nobles all bowing as he passes them- it makes him feel smaller instead of bigger. He doesn’t have much patience with formalities when he can simply enter through the door behind the tapestries. It leads directly onto the raised platform where the thrones sit. But while he can leave the court through that door, he’s forbidden from entering it that way. It’s frustrating beyond words. There are days when he thinks half his apprehension about attending court would disappear if that rule did.

Of course, now the court sessions fill him with horror, not just discomfort, and for a completely different reason.

As Jongin takes the throne, the King speaks. “The court may commence. Anything of importance to report?”

One of the nobles, Lord Yesung, answers in measured tones, keeping his head slightly inclined and eyes on the floor. “The most recent rebellion has been successfully quelled, Your Majesty. General Choi has sent word of that.”

Jongin isn’t surprised. It is General Choi Siwon who the King tasked with teaching warfare and the military arts to his own son. He is so highly favoured for a reason.

“Have they been rounded up?” says King Hujun sternly, but Jongin knows he is secretly satisfied. “Every last one of them?”

“I’m not sure of the details, Your Majesty,” says Lord Yesung, bowing lower. Even if he does know more than he lets on, he has no reason to be the bearer when King Hujun will be sure to hear all from General Choi himself anyway. The General will be summoned to this very court session, despite his certain exhaustion from fighting a skewed battle only to travel back to the capital immediately.

“I’m sure the General is on his way, anyway,” says the King, allowing some smugness to creep into his tone. “But we have made prisoners of some of them. Enough of them for this to be considered a victory.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“How are the burnings proceeding?”

“They are a very popular spectacle among the common citizens, Your Majesty.”

The King nods approvingly. Jongin’s stomach lurches. He grips the armrests of the throne, swallowing and taking deep breaths.

A guard enters the court, announcing the arrival of the General. He leaves, and is replaced by General Choi, all imposing six feet of him still in his time-worn battle armour. He sinks to his knees. He stands his sword with its point to the ground and closes his palm on the handle, resting his forehead on his knuckles. A homage, a pledge of allegiance. “I am back from battle, sire,” he rumbles, “and I bring you victory.”

“Did you capture Kim Junmyeon?” says King Hujun. Jongin holds back from rolling his eyes.

“The leader escaped our clutches, sire,” Siwon says apologetically. “I am sorry to disappoint you. His magic was considerably more powerful than we thought. We were ill equipped to fight it. However, we captured sixty.”

“They will be put to death,” says King Hujun with relish. “That leaves only a handful of them.”

“We will do our utmost to hunt down the very last of them.”

“You may stand, General.”

Choi Siwon gets to his feet, closing his other palm over the first. The point of his sword would impale the marble flooring if it were in the hands of a less skilled swordsman.

“They will be put to death, but the procedures will be different. It comes about favourably that I announce this during your presence in court, General. You came just in time. I see it as a good omen.”

Siwon bows deeply, his hair falling forward in curtains.

“The witches will still be whipped and paraded through the city,” continues the King, “but the burnings are for us to behold. I, the King, will oversee them. The Prince will direct the proceedings. And all members of my court, as well as guests of distinction, will be invited. It will be a noble affair, for I believe that is the true assertion of our place, and the ideal way to put them in theirs. Of those who I would have preside over every burning, you are one, General.”

Jongin can barely believe what he is hearing. But the king is right next to him and his words filter clearly even through the ringing in Jongin’s ears. The king’s smugness is apparent as General Choi reiterates how honoured he is, how this is an excellent way to set an example of how an able king must dispose of threatening elements, etc. In stark contrast, his son’s pallor is all the more noticeable in contrast to his usual, singularly tanned, glowing complexion- although he lost all his glow after what happened to Baekhyun.

Jongin thinks he might be sick.

After General Choi peters off a bit and is quietly kneeling again, forehead on the hilt of his sword, Shim Changmin gets to his feet and bows. King Hujun waves his hand, giving him leave to speak.

“Your Majesty, it’s more fitting for the witches to die dishonourable deaths as the objects of mockery of low, vulgar commoners.”

“They will be mocked,” says King Hujun dismissively, “they will be paraded through the meanest street.”

“But they will die away from those eyes, regarded instead by yours,” says Changmin, “Your gaze the last thing they meet before death, would be much more than they deserve.”

The king’s face closes off, and it is difficult to tell whether he is displeased or merely thoughtful. Jongin stares at Changmin with all the keenness of his gratitude, but Changmin does not look at him, for anyone who addresses the king during court are not to look away from him until he is done with them.

“What you say is true,” says the king finally, “but that can be resolved. They will be blindfolded before they are brought in front of the court. What say you, General?”

“Additionally, cutting off one of the senses will heighten the pain of death, sire,” said the General. “It is most suitable.”

“Well, Changmin?”

Changmin bows wordlessly, then takes his seat again. A cold sweat breaks over Jongin’s skin. Hopelessness and disgust heave inside him, coiling over each other oppressively.

“Your Majesty...” he speaks up with difficulty, and holds back a wince when the attention of the whole court focuses on him. “I think that would be too cruel. The witches can hardly help how they are born. They need not be tortured… their deaths need not be spectacles for the morbid fascination and derision of brutish minds…”

He is implying that it would be brutish of the court and especially the King to move the entertainment of witch-burning to the court, and if the King understands, he’d be livid at the insolence. But Jongin hopes it sounds ambiguous enough that the King won’t want to jump to conclusions, or that he’ll be too surprised by Jongin protesting again after he personally made sure his son’s protests died in his throat to really catch on to layers of meaning. 

Anyway, even if the King thinks it insolence, the rest of the court can only pay obeisance to the Crown Prince, take even insolence as their grateful due. So Jongin’s speech unfurls like a parchment scroll, and Jongin lets go of the reins. “If they must be killed, then it should be done quietly, without fuss, with minimal mess, preferably painless. They must be killed almost as though they had never even been born. Constantly striking hatred and fear for the witches in the hearts of the people only leads to paranoia and disorder, with innocents being tried as witches.”

Jongin swallows and stops. He’d meant to go on a bit and talk about how the King will then acquire a reputation of being a compassionate, benevolent, yet fierce protector and dispenser of justice, in exactly the manners and proportions that are ideal for a ruler… but the King’s displeasure has been palpably increasing throughout his speech and Jongin is physically unable to go on. He is afraid to look around, but he hears his father exhale slowly, as though letting go of the last of his patience.

“You call upon me to remind you, Crown Prince, that the paranoia works very much in our favour.” Jongin can feel his eyes boring into him. It makes him want to fidget, as does the forced calm of his words. “The witches cannot hope to escape notice precisely because of the people’s heightened alarm. Of course a few innocents will end up being collateral damage, but so it has always been, every war in history. Eh, General?”

“Indeed, sire.”

“After all those history lessons, you should have gleaned this much at the very least. That it is empire that matters, empire that the ruler should protect. Innocents are no threat to the empire, and thus matter even less.”

Jongin really thinks he might throw up, right here in front of the whole accursed court. He fists his hands on his thighs. His breathing turns harsh, vision blurring.

“You shall seek out your history master and work on becoming worthy of your title. Your sitting here is a waste until you are worthy.”

Jongin should be angry, humiliated, but really he’s just relieved. Relieved that it’s over for now, relieved at being dismissed in good time. He rushes out to retch.

♛

Deep in the woods, so deep the tree-roots and brambles grow like the gnarled fingers of ogres, and every wild animal encountered is as likely to be a witch’s familiar as not, a man’s muttering is all that breaks the still silence of the trees. Not a bird, not a cricket, not even the whirr of fireflies’ wings can be heard, but Yixing’s voice is a steady murmur as he sits cross legged on the forest floor, a pot of ashes in his lap. A large fairy ring encircles him, and there are other smaller ones in other parts of the clearing. The tree tops form a dome above his head and the only light that filters through is soft and dappled.

He ceases his murmurings for a moment, voice descending into a hum, wordless, but with deliberate intonation. He upends the ashes onto the grass in front of him. They fall in a heap. His eyes catch a gleam and he snatches it up. It is a locket, its metal charred and blackened, the smell of fire clinging to it as much from the ashes it’s been steeped in as from the flames that failed to do more than deface the precious metal.

He swallows some soot, inhales a generous amount, then opens the locket and coughs into it. He separates it from its chain. Then he unclasps the chain, laying it along the border of the fairy ring. He rubs just the locket with his thumb, rubbing more soot into its intricate design and blackening it further. His voice breaks into chanting again.

The ash flies into the air, swirls up, clumps together, shaping tendrils of smoke. The tendrils weave a silhouette of smoke. And then the shadow becomes bone, becomes flesh. A boy rises from the ashes, his skin scarred and swollen, an angry, blistering red, eyes melted shut. Yixing gently moves the boy’s head to his lap. He feels his strength slip away from him in a steady trickle, his head heavy and legs numb, but his incantations thrum with more energy. The boy’s raw, puckered skin smoothes over into pale alabaster, softened, lilylike. His lashes flutter in place, like the delicate legs of so many insects never to be found in this part of the woods. His silvery hair fans out, a unicorn’s mane under moonlight. His fingers twitch, perfect, as clever as a smith’s and as pretty as a princess’s. Yixing guesses that it must be with those exquisite fingers that he orchestrates magic; such fingers do not come upon this earth without singular purpose.

Yixing swipes his finger inside the locket, collecting the sooty spittle, and applies it to the hollow of the boy’s throat, pressing into his adam’s apple. He hums without stopping for breath. He withdraws when he notices the chain glow, red-hot, singeing the grass beneath to a wither, a heat that won’t spark.

Yixing goes quiet for the first time in hours, just watching the boy. Smoke leaves his mouth in visible puffs every time he exhales. Under dew and dappled light, he shimmers, ethereal.

He opens his eyes, clear grey, and the smudges of smoke on his eyelids don’t disappear. Yixing goes lax and immobile, drained completely. He can’t even speak. All he can do is watch the boy blink up at the treetops, slow, heavy blinks, his face childlike and open.

The boy sits up and looks around, then clumsily gets to his feet, taking small steps. When he steps out of the fairy ring Yixing’s heart clenches for a dreadful moment, but the boy is still whole, still hale, patches of sunlight glancing off his fluffy head and setting parts of his skin aglow. The boy does a round of the clearing, eyes dancing restlessly, like a young deer exploring.

“Don’t… wander too far,” says Yixing, his voice weak. He doesn’t know if the boy will understand him, and he is still too weak to move. The boy seems to comprehend perfectly, though, for he walks back and sits in front of Yixing, crossing his legs to mimic him. They are knee to knee. Yixing is reassured to feel the warmth of his skin. The boy smiles softly, his breaths still visible but not so dark now, exuding just as much healthy air as smoke. He is bright-eyed and warm-blooded. He licks his lips and leaves them sheened with a reassuring wetness.

“What’s your name?” says Yixing quietly. A slow buzz fills his body, like a machine running again. His foot has fallen asleep under him.

“Baekhyun,” says the boy promptly. Yixing stretches his foot out and presses it, trying to get more blood flow to it. He hisses at the electric sting.

“How old are you?” He continues pressing his foot, gingerly.

Baekhyun looks thoughtful, then shrugs.

“Where are you from? Who are you?” Yixing jiggles his leg, then lifts it slightly, rotating the ankle. Baekhyun watches as though fascinated. He unfolds his own leg and wriggles his toes experimentally. 

Yixing sighs. “I guess your body coordination won’t be perfect off the bat.” He stands, proffering his hand to Baekhyun. “If you remember anything at all about yourself, tell me.”

Baekhyun stretches out his hand, too, but doesn’t know he’s supposed to hold Yixing’s. Yixing catches his hand and clasps it. Baekhyun laughs delightedly.

“Now stand. Don’t let go of my hand.”

“Now  _ stand _ , don’t let go of my  _ hand _ ,” sings Baekhyun as he is practically hauled up, grass stains decorating his skin. He has a lovely voice.

“Let’s go.” Yixing begins walking. Baekhyun falls into step beside him. Yixing swings their hands, just to hear Baekhyun’s laughter again. It is as sweet as his singing.

“Where are we going?” asks Baekhyun.

“To get you some clothing,” says Yixing.

“Where are we  _ going _ to get me some  _ clothing _ ,” sings Baekhyun, swinging their hands, practically skipping. “Now  _ stand _ , don’t let go of my  _ hand _ . Where are we  _ going _ to get me some  _ clothing _ . My name is  _ Baekhyun _ .” He is quiet for a few beats; the number of beats that would make a line, if he had a line to rhyme with Baekhyun. And then, once more, “My name is  _ Baekhyun _ .” The next time he sings these lines, he just repeats that last line for lack of a rhyme.

Yixing is glad Baekhyun’s mind’s capabilities are intact, even if his memories aren’t.

♛

All Jongin wants to do is retreat to his dim chambers and wait for the sickness to abate, but he isn’t sure Yoona will leave him alone. She’ll probably insist on ministering to him, no matter how sternly he tells her not to bother him; his sternness doesn’t affect her when he’s sick. It’s as though she perceives his weakness and takes advantage of it.

Which is why, when she draws back the drapes around his bed just enough to sidle up to his side, with vials, mixing bowls and a small grinding stone on a tray, he sits up quickly, attempting to seem more energetic than he feels. “It’s not medicine I need,” he says, “I just need to clear my head.”

Yoona tilts her head, considering him doubtfully. “I suppose… you could go hunting,” she says with an unwillingness that betrays she’d much rather confine him to bed and tend to him whether or not he likes it, but even she hasn’t taken such liberty with him as to go against his express wishes. “I think it’s much better if you rest, though.”

He’s about to remind her how long it’s been since the last hunt when he’s struck by a sudden idea. “Yes, I shall go hunting. It’s exactly what I need right now.”

“But you must take me along,” she argues.

“Nonsense,” he says briskly, getting off the bed.

“You must. Shall I call for preparations, then?”

“No!” He stops her, hand circling her arm above the elbow. Her eyes widen. “Only tell Shim Changmin.”

“Ah,” she nods knowingly, then prances off, braided hair swinging so hard that a trinket falls off the end of her plait. Once she is gone, Jongin picks it up and shakes it. It tinkles in a way that doesn’t attack his pounding head, but rather leaves him indifferent. As though, if it tinkles forevermore, it won’t even keep sleep from him as long as it is regularly timed. In the shadowiness of his room he can’t see its shine. He puts it under his pillow with a vague idea of returning it to her later, and an even vaguer idea that if it is under his head while he sleeps, the nightmares will be driven away.

♛

Yixing swings Baekhyun’s hand all the way to Junmyeon’s house, steering him, for his skipping could overtake Yixing’s strides. “Junmyeon!” he shouts, while Baekhyun bounces on the spot, head turning and bright eyes dancing like a squirrel. A stone cottage, and instead of roof slats there is a sloping ceiling, also of stone. Ivy tendrils over its face and coils around the chimney.

The puffs of coloured smoke- poisonous orange and sunset vermillion- peter out, and the door opens. Baekhyun’s mouth falls open. He didn’t notice the door beneath all that ivy.

“Hey,” says the man who opened the door, stepping out into the light. He smells like the smoke from his chimney. Like a poisonous sunset. Dangerous yet enticing, almost comforting all at the same time. Soft planes of his face, soft and billowy robes in cornflower blue and white down that you’d want to bury your face in and roll in bed with. But his eyes aren’t soft.

“Hey, Junmyeon,” pipes Baekhyun, then grins at Yixing, wanting to be patted and told he did a good job.

“And who may this be?” says Junmyeon, mouth twisted with amusement.

“A babe in the woods,” says Yixing, “I found him like this.”

“Just like this, huh?” Jumnyeon’s gaze always seems disquietingly sharp. “Naked and vulnerable?” Baekhyun hides behind Yixing at those words, peering at Junmyeon with his head tilted above Yixing’s elbow, only one eye visible from behind Yixing’s arm.

Yixing clears his throat. “I was joking. This is Baekhyun.”

Junmyeon raises his eyebrows. “The Prince’s favourite? Trial last May?”

Yixing nodded. “The hottest day of the year.”

“Finally.”

Yixing snorts. “Don’t give me that. It took a while to find a fairy ring.”

“I know, but nicking his ashes was not easy for me either,” says Junmyeon cajolingly. “And I didn’t want you to be captured and burned before you could revive him.” He chuckles when Yixing deadpans at him. He flips his palm towards himself a few times, looking at Baekhyun. “Come here, child.”

Baekhyun shakes his head and aligns his head with Yixing’s neck.

“He’s fully alive?” says Junmyeon.

Yixing feels the warmth of Baekhyun’s breath on his neck, and nods.

“Well,” says Junmyeon.

Yixing pushes Baekhyun in front of him. Baekhyun catches hold of his sleeve and keens, high-pitched and distressed. Yixing knows Junmyeon can sense even a moment of weakness, so he pushes Baekhyun again, rougher.

“There, there, child. I’m not going to hurt you,” says Junmyeon, taking Baekhyun’s wrist, vice-like. Baekhyun doesn’t look away from Yixing while being dragged inside, eyes glimmering with the conviction that he is being abandoned. Yixing doesn’t look away from Baekhyun.

“I’ll see you again!” shouts Yixing. “I’ll visit everyday! I promise!”

Baekhyun sticks his tongue out at him, trying not to cry.

“Attached to him already, are you, Yixing?” Junmyeon chuckles, shutting the door. Yixing blinks hard, trying to rid himself of the mental image of Baekhyun trapped behind all that ivy.

♛

Sabin is in better spirits today. He doesn’t need much coaxing before he breaks into a comfortable canter. It’s not that he is rebellious; rather, he’s been depressed. Jongin doesn’t blame him.

“I know you miss her, but she’s in a better place now,” says Jongin, massaging down his neck as they enter the woods, light closing off behind them. He doesn’t believe his own words; when he remembers what happened he is filled only with rage. But sometimes he feels like the only one he can communicate his loss to, and be understood, truly understood as pain recognises pain, is Sabin. But Sabin seems better now, so he’ll stop going to the stables only to cry into the horse’s mane, knotting his fingers in it when he wants to scream.

Sabin and Liebe, Baekhyun’s filly, had a companionship that ran deep and loyal. When Liebe was put down because everyone thought her more likely a familiar than not, given her master had been a witch, Jongin’s frantic attempts to stop it all came to naught. He enlisted the help of the stableboy, Kyungsoo, whose ingrained love for horses and animals dominated any fear of witches, dominated even the national obsession with purging every last trace of witchery in any shape or form, an obsession that must have affected him too like the contagion it was. But they weren’t able to smuggle Liebe away in time. Kyungsoo was sacked, and Jongin had a very unpleasant meeting with the King. For a while he was only allowed out of his chambers to attend court. Even his meals were brought to his chambers, and the days that Yoona managed to take the place of the maidservant who brought him food were the only ones in which he was able to talk to an ally.

If only they’d been successful, Liebe would’ve lived. But if Kyungsoo’s involvement had been discovered, he’d almost certainly have been put to death. Jongin didn’t dwell very long on what Baekhyun would have wanted, for Liebe to live or for Kyungsoo to live. Baekhyun was gone, so there was no way to know.

Kyungsoo agreed to help knowing the risks involved. The problem is, Jongin feels like Baekhyun’s death is the only one that matters. Liebe only mattered because Baekhyun was fond of her. Because she was the one substantial thing he left behind. And poor Kyungsoo, with the brave eyes and the hay in his hair, doesn’t matter at all. Jongin doesn’t know where he is now, what he’s doing, whether he’s getting by. Jongin can’t bring himself to care.

He isn’t doing this because he cares, Jongin thinks, as his whole hunting entourage follows with Shim Changmin at the head. He isn’t doing this because of all the witches dying. He is doing this because Baekhyun died- why did Baekhyun have to die? Why Baekhyun? He’s heard it all- Baekhyun did no harm, but he might’ve progenited witch children if he had continued to live; or he might’ve turned around and become the snake that bit the hand that fed it; and even if he did none of these things it was for the cause, all witches had to die without their blood so much as touching the ground and contaminating the food that grew from the same soil or the water that sprung there; all witches had to go up in flames. All witches had to die to protect the populace.

Well, Jongin will smother it and rip it to shreds, along with everyone who furthers that cause. They can die tortured martyr deaths if they want. They can die instead of the witches. Jongin doesn’t care.

And this conviction is strangely freeing. As the wind rushes at his face, the pounding in his head lessens and for a few seconds of madness he knows that no matter what he does, he will never be at peace- but he can make his peace with  _ that _ .

♛

“What are you upto, Baekhyunnie?”

“Gardening,” says Baekhyun, pressing his lips together as he pats soil around a frail herb. It looks so soft-stemmed that he pushes its head to the ground, but when he leaves it, it springs back up. Although, he doesn’t push it in a such a steep curve that it could break, for if it does Junmyeon will not be pleased. Baekhyun is still a little scared of Junmyeon. Even though he hasn’t been mean to him so far apart from separating him from Yixing, Baekhyun has a feeling he could be mean if he wanted to be.

Yixing crouches down next to him and touches one of the youngest leaves, barely budding from the stalk. It grows in front of their eyes, the leaf extending and darkening into an older green, the light green buds tucked around it a still audience. Baekhyun has a flash of an image in his mind: a line of leaves, two single files, aligning with each other and drooping the moment he touches them. It reminds him of when he first met Junmyeon. Of aligning with Yixing and drooping when he left. Baekhyun wonders whether Yixing can do the opposite of what he can- coaxing leaves to open up whereas Baekhyun’s touch makes them retreat- but when he tries it now, touching the herb on various leaves, older ones and tender budding ones, they are indifferent, staying haughtily open.

“Why isn’t it working?” pouts Baekhyun.

Yixing laughs. “I’m in the way of being a healer, you see.” He sweeps Baekhyun’s hair across his forehead with gentle fingers, so that it falls in a comma over the side of his face. “You have magic too. But a different kind. Your own.”

“But once I touched leaves and they folded away.” Baekhyun’s lips quiver. “Did I lose my powers?”

Yixing laughs. “You must have touched a touch-me-not.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a kind of plant that folds its leaves no matter who touches them.” Seeing that Baekhyun’s pouting didn’t abate, Yixing says sweetly, “You don’t have a special way with plants, but neither do I… I just revive things or make them grow.”

“You do that,” says Baekhyun, “but what do I do? What if I never remember what I do?”

“That touch-me-not you encountered,” says Yixing, “was it before or after you met me?”

Baekhyun bites his lip. He can’t remember anything from before Yixing if he casts his mind back and looks for an order of things. But he remembers the order of things from after Yixing (it is strange to think of it as ‘after’ Yixing, though, when Yixing is the beginning, for him), and the touch-me-not doesn’t figure anywhere in that order.

“It’s not after I met you,” says Baekhyun.

“So you’re remembering things,” says Yixing, “bit by bit. One of these days you’ll remember your magic. Or your body will remember it for you. It might just burst out of you one day and you’ll feel like you’re discovering it. But discovering it will help you remember your previous experience of it.”

Yixing’s voice lulls, but the plants strain towards the sound, quivering. “Will you sing me to sleep tonight?” Baekhyun says, pleading.

“About that,” says Yixing, “you seem to only need it when you’re here.”

Baekhyun nods.

“You sleep much better in my house than Junmyeon’s, don’t you?”

Baekhyun nods energetically. The plants quiver energetically, as though Yixing’s voice tickles them.

“What’s this engrossing conversation I’m missing out on?” Junmyeon’s voice cuts in on them, as the man himself levitates over the newly prepared earth and lands next to Baekhyun. The plants act like they didn’t notice what Junmyeon just did. Baekhyun frowns at him on their behalf. How rude of him, to levitate over their heads without their permission. They probably got an eyeful of his underclothes. He wishes they’d reward impoliteness with impoliteness and put their heads together and whisper about him. Although, Baekhyun hears them whispering aplenty, rustling their leaves together, and they might well be talking about Junmyeon’s rudeness in-between sighing over how dreamy Yixing is.

“We were just talking about how Baekhyun’s memory is improving,” says Yixing lightly, “and he’ll remember his magic too someday, like he so badly wants.”

“We so badly want the same thing,” says Junmyeon to Baekhyun, “for you to finally be useful to me. I hope that day comes soon.”

Baekhyun frowns harder at him. “I’m being useful now.”

“He’s gardening,” says Yixing grandly, gesturing at the rows of plants, which bob their heads.

“And you could do with a wave of your hand over this, what he’ll take months to do,” deadpans Junmyeon.

“I won’t help you even when I have my magic.” Baekhyun scowls fiercely.

Junmyeon snorts. “Ungrateful brat. I feed and clothe you, keep you safe from wild animals-”

“You don’t have to anymore. I’m going to live with Yixing!” announces Baekhyun, yelling for emphasis. “And I’ve never gotten a hint of any wild animal. You’re making it up. So there.”

“The wild animals stay away because we keep them away, brat,” says Junmyeon, without any real bite. “And until you have magic of your own, you’ll have to rely on us for that.”

Baekhyun tilts his head and narrows his eyes, unconvinced. “Even if you’re telling the truth, I don’t need you. I have Yixing.”

“Yixing’s magic is healing, not protection. Ignorant brat.”

“Junmyeon specialises in magical barriers,” says Yixing, ruffling Baekhyun’s hair just so he can sweep it back into a comma again. “But you’d be safe in my house too,” he adds. “This part of the woods is all protected, thanks to him.”

“Hmph.” Baekhyun turns away from a chuckling Junmyeon, into the wide eyes of a newcomer.

“Oh, hi, Kyungsoo,” Yixing greets. The wide eyes flick to him once before returning to regard Baekhyun with a curious intensity. “Hey,” he says, speaking to Yixing but looking at Baekhyun, and Baekhyun finds he likes the sound. He glances at the plants but they are unaffected by the deep timbre.

“Do you sing?” Baekhyun asks him.

“Huh?” says Kyungsoo.

“I think I’d like it if you sang. Because I like it when you talk. It works that way with Yixing,” confides Baekhyun. “He sounds like mellow sunlight when he talks. But even more when he sings.”

Kyungsoo smiles. It isn’t a wide smile, in the sense that his lips curve closer together, sort of converging, with his cupid’s bow dipping to allow it. It is wide in the sense that even though his lips take up a smaller space, the smile isn’t confined to his lips, bunching up his cheeks until they shine. Baekhyun hasn’t met someone else with so much cheek before, besides himself. Yixing doesn’t have much cheek, he even has a hole in one of them. And Junmyeon has a bit of cheek, and it looks soft, but Baekhyun doesn’t have the courage to touch it and see. He contented himself thus far with poking his own cheek in the wrought-iron framed mirror Junmyeon has in an alcove. But now he’s found another pair of cheeks, and he rather thinks they are bunchier and shinier than his own.

“Baekhyun, this is Kyungsoo,” says Yixing. “Kyungsoo, Baekhyun.”

Kyungsoo bows, which would’ve taken Baekhyun aback if he was all there, but he is lost in trying to figure out how to pronounce Kyungsoo’s name. A compounded consonant sound against his palate, moving to another compounded consonant sound in his throat. Yixing’s name is like that too, so he doesn’t know why he is having trouble only with Kyungsoo’s name. Finally, he settles for ‘Soo.’

“Soo,” he tries out, and when that makes Kyungsoo smile again, Baekhyun pokes the other’s cheek. It is far more satisfying than poking his own cheek. “Are you a witch too?”

“I am,” says Kyungsoo, grabbing his finger and lowering it.

Baekhyun pouts, hovering his finger up again but not poking this time. “What’s your power then?”

“Animal speak.”

“You can talk to them?”

“I can communicate with them deeply. It’s not like talking. It’s silent.”

“Oooh.” Baekhyun promises himself that he’ll get Kyungsoo to show him sometime. He turns to Junmyeon. “I double don’t need you. Kyungsoo can just tell the wild animals to stay away from me!”

♛

Sabin slows to a trot as the path narrows, Jongin’s entourage moving into a single file behind him. The tree roots emerge from the forest floor like dolphins’ backs when they break the surface of water, not as large as that but large enough that the horses sometimes have to jump rather than step over. Along the way, Lee Hyukjae shoots down a boar. Some of the other nobles want to take down some spotted deer, for they came across an entire herd along the way and their eyes quite popped out of their heads with greed. Jongin forbids them from shooting even one; after all hunting is only an excuse for them to meet, unheard and unseen, at the heart of the woods where even the movement of a single leaf calls attention to itself. They already felled the boar, and perhaps he’ll allow a rabbit or two to be shot if they come across any, but not the deer with their liquid eyes and brittle-looking legs. Baekhyun loved deer. Once he tamed a fawn and walked along the forest path with his arms circling its neck, like Alice in the wood where nothing and nobody had a name. Jongin enjoyed reading that passage to Baekhyun, but Baekhyun was always saddened at the end, when the fawn leaves Alice once they’re out on the other side of the woods because it suddenly knows it’s a fawn and Alice, human. As though it meant nothing that they walked all the way there in each other’s embrace.

Jongin ignores the nobles’ discontent at having to let the deer go. He nods to Changmin. He trusts Changmin. And Changmin nods back, like a confirmation of that trust, then takes aim and lets fly an arrow.

It hits a tree at the other end of the clearing, as he aimed for. The herd scatters in alarm, and after a few flurried minutes, leaves the clearing free for them. Jongin steps in first, and the others pour in and gather in a semi-circle in front of him.

“First, I must ask you whether you all still believe what I believe. Anyone who has had a change of heart can leave, and I promise no harm will come to you, provided you hold your tongue.” Jongin looks around the clearing.

Nobody moves.

“Fine. Now, to discuss the recent changes in witch-burning procedure. We won’t be able to save anyone right under the king’s nose, with all the court watching. Even though we weren’t able to save many when the burnings were public, there was still a chance to send them into hiding. While one way to look at it is that it’s a huge blow to our mission, I think differently. I think the time has come. Fate has made it so we have only one possible course.”

Changmin’s cheekbones tighten, a telltale sign of his excitement. He gazes at Jongin with glittering eyes. The other nobles have a variety of reactions, some shift uneasily, some look nervous or conflicted and others downright afraid.

“Once again,” says Jongin, “If any of you get cold feet and want to leave, seeing the path we must take henceforth- now is the time to leave. I can guarantee your safety if you guarantee your secrecy.”

Jung Yunho speaks, lips barely parting and eyes not leaving the ground. “Your Highness… before I’m in too deep…”

“I understand, Yunho,” says Jongin, “thank you for serving me as long as you have.”

“Your Highness! I still want to be of service to you, just not in this way. And I vow my silence.”

Jongin pats him on the shoulder, clasping it once before Yunho bows to the others and mounts his horse. Everyone watches him go, restless and whispering more than before. Changmin is quiet, and Jongin smiles at him softly, until the frown of disappointment lifts from his brow.

Nobody notices a boy with smoke smudged around his eyes, sitting up in the very tree Changmin stuck his arrow into. He sits with bated breath, watching them through the foliage that hides him from view, watching only one of them for most of that time.

  
  



	2. Milk & Honey

Baekhyun walks along the forest path, hands clasped lovingly around the slender neck of a fawn. The fawn’s ears flatten back against her head in a sign that the affection is mutual. With Baekhyun, she is practically tame.

A crackling follows them wherever they go, but Baekhyun seems not to hear it. Neither is the fawn alarmed, its animal instinct either useless or detecting nothing. But Jongin knows. It is not premonition so much as conviction. His dread builds as the crackling grows louder, like the eerie war cry of unseen, chimeral creatures surrounding the two on all sides. Jongin knows, but that is all- he can do nothing, he cannot look away. A charred smell putrefies the air, like many pyres kindling, many corpses. Baekhyun breathes on, oblivious. The fawn plods alongside him on her brittle legs, sedately, trustingly.

The wildfire swallows them in all of a moment, in an explosive rush of flame that leaves nothing behind. Jongin sees the nothing left behind. He chokes, lungs coated with soot. He heaves from the smell, charred and putrefied. Suddenly he has a body. Just when he has the least use for one. His eyes stream; he can’t see the destruction anymore, can’t see anything, but that is small reprieve, much too late.

He wakes, all tangled up in his sheets to the point he is choking from them, his face wet. Yoonah is loosening the sheets around his throat. “I couldn’t get you to wake up, and then I couldn’t get you to hold still.” A sheen of tears on her face, but she wipes his tears instead, smooths his hair back with her hand wet from his tears and it is so wet that his fringe stays slicked back from his forehead. He struggles to free himself from the sheets, helping her, and kicks them off. He takes off his robe as well, not mindful in front of her. He is clammy all over. She gathers everything into a bundle and leaves.

Jongin draws the tapestries around the bed. He sits for a moment, naked and awake, then he opens them again. He wants to pace around his chambers but he doesn’t want to get out of bed. It feels strange to have his sheets taken away. The last time he had them taken away in his presence, he’d made love to Baekhyun on them until they were drenched with a heady amalgamation of their scents, sweat and sex and milk and honey. He’d ordered for them to be changed, and he’d bathed with Baekhyun in the meanwhile, pampering him with new scents. 

This time, he knows he probably pissed the sheets.

♛

Baekhyun climbs down the tree once the clearing is empty and the sounds of hooves fade until he can’t hear them anymore. He carefully moves from branch to branch, testing his foothold, and finally shimmies down the trunk. He can’t wait to get home and tell Yixing about it. Yixing tells him to climb trees to improve his body coordination, but not too high because he’s still exploring how to use his body the way he wants to. Baekhyun pulls the arrow out of the tree’s trunk and puts it into his sack, hovering his fingers over the deep wound in the bark with a pout of apology. He will bring Yixing here to heal it later, he decides. Making sure the arrowhead isn’t goring any of the fruits in the sack, he starts journeying back to Junmyeon’s place.

When he walks into the cottage, a cauldron is bubbling over. Junmyeon bends over it, sweat beading on his forehead. The smoke that issues from the cauldron is thick, smoggy, and pungent in a way that makes his lungs prickle with the faint stirrings of memory.

He doesn’t notice the smoke floating towards him as though it’s attracted to him until, after every dissipation, he sees his skin stained. He assumes this is how some smokes behave, lifting his limbs to look at the blurry grey patches. But Yixing cries out and runs to him, grabbing his hand and looking at the ashen bits of skin with horror.

“Yixing, it’s all right, I’ll take care of it,” says Joonmyun, adding firewood. The cauldron bubbles and hisses. Joonmyun leaves it to stew, then strides over to them, lifting his palm and moving his lips to say something Baekhyun can’t hear over the sounds made by the liquid in the cauldron. Baekhyun feels a woosh, like a sharp breeze, then a gentle coolness settles over his skin, like a body sheet mask. That’s strange, because Baekhyun doesn’t remember ever wearing one, but he remembers its cooling caress as though it is something he experienced.

“The smoke can’t touch you now, so while I’m holding up the barrier, Yixing should hurry up and heal you,” says Joonmyun. Yixing’s grip on his limbs tightens, and Baekhyun feels a woosh again, but it seeps out of his skin, as though air is escaping from the pores of his skin. “Yixing,” Baekhyun babbles, “it feels weird.” Yixing rubs up and down his arms soothingly until he’s done.

“Okay, I’ll take Yixing out of the barrier now, but I’ll keep you in it until it’s time for you both to leave,” says Joonmyun.

“Okay,” says Baekhyun in a small voice. “Joonmyun? Why did that happen to me?”

“I’ll tell you about it, Baekhyun,” interrupts Yixing, “soon.”

“Okay.” Baekhyun nods. 

Yixing smiles, “Good boy.”

“Come over here and help,” says Joonmyun. Baekhyun sidles up to him obediently, and Joonmyun holds out an extra ladle from him, but at that moment the fire crackles, and seeing the flames up close, Baekhyun thinks he never noticed before how frightening they are. The cauldron and bricks are the only things hemming them in, but they shoot and flick through every opening they get like serpent tongues, and anything so untameable must burst through and riot at some point. Baekhyun remembers columns of smoke, and columns of wood with people pinned to them. He remembers flames rushing at him, gobbling up his body in an inferno of pain so unbearable even as a memory, even as a shadow of the real thing, that he blacks out.

♛

Jongin clutches the arms of the throne as though his grip on them is the only thing grounding him. He can barely keep his eyes open with the way the room swims in front of his eyes and how his insides heave, but he knows his father is checking to make sure that he’s watching every now and then. 

“Spare me, my king, I beg of you, it isn’t true, I’ve only ever been the most loyal subject to you, I’ve never done any magic, I don’t know how, I was never a witch, no such blood runs in my family, I swear it isn’t true,” blithers the woman bound to the post. When her outpourings turn into screams, Jongin looks away, only for his father to grab his face, fingers digging into his cheeks, and turn it so that he has to look. Jongin watches her writhe, her eyes rolling to the back of her head. When the flames swallow her from sight, he’s almost relieved. When the screaming stops, he’s definitely relieved.

He’s out of his throne the moment the woman is dead, even though this is only the beginning of the ritual. Siwon will slash her ashes with his sword, and everyone is supposed to take a pinch of her ashes as not just a souvenir of the ‘successful’ burning but as some sort of talisman. It took begging at his father’s feet for the King to agree not to give away Baekhyun’s ashes after his burning, but to collect them into a pot and allow Jongin to keep them.

He only feels like he can keep it together once he’s back in his chamber, and even then it’s only a passing illusion. He calls an attendant to bring a basin, and pukes into that until he’s heaving out empty air. 

Yoonah hears about it and comes to him, of course she does. Jongin lies inert in his much-too-large bed, and allows her to ply him with concoctions from the herbalist. When Yoonah asks him in a soft voice whether he’ll consult her, though, he tries to sit up, protesting.

“Do it for me,” Yoonah begs. “Meet her once. For my sake.”

Jongin knows it’ll do him good in the short-term. But he doesn’t know whether she won’t report back to the King. It is the king who pays her salary, after all.

“She’s my person,” says Yoonah, as if reading his thoughts. That certainly increases her trustworthiness, but Jongin is still unsure. He’s afraid of trusting strangers, anyone other than Yoonah and a few of the nobles.

“I guarantee she’s on our side,” Yoonah emphasises, and Jongin finally gives in. “I’ll meet her once,” he says, and Yoonah clasps her hands and sighs her thanks.

Yoonah leaves, and returns with the herbalist. In the interim Jongin lies in bed and wishes he could go visit Baekhyun’s ashes, hold the pot in his hand and ground himself, renew his strength and resolve. But he feels too sick to get up from bed and put feet on the ground, and he doesn’t want to call his attendants to carry him there. Whenever he visits Baekhyun’s ashes, it’s in private. Always. He doesn’t leave the cleaning of that room, and that shelf, to anyone else. Nobody ever escorts him there; nobody ever enters that room apart from him, and he intends to keep it that way. 

“Your Highness.” An unfamiliar voice disrupts his thoughts. Jongin blinks into the dimness, Yoonah’s candle casting a glow partly on her face and partly on an old woman’s, before the courtesan places the candle on his bedside cabinet. The carvings of the elephant hunt appear grooved deeper with shadows. Jongin swallows and sits up, Yoonah helping him, rearranging the sheets once he’s found a comfortable position.

“Thank you for agreeing to see me, Your Highness,” the old woman continues. “My only wish is that you had called me earlier. During the day, preferably, when there is plenty of light for me to examine you.”

“He couldn’t have, Selah,” Yoonah interrupts uneasily, “he was required to attend a purge ritual this morning…”

“Ah,” says Selah, drawing out the syllable. Jongin doesn’t like how she looks at him next, a knowing glimmer in her eyes. The candlelight casts the wrinkles on her face in even sharper relief than the cabinet’s carvings, but despite her ancience Jongin can see that Yoonah resembles her. 

“You’re both related?” says Jongin. Yoonah gives him a quick glance that he doesn’t know how to read.

“It so happens that we are, so it please Your Highness,” says Selah, “but that’s neither here nor there. I need to feel your pulse.”

Jongin lets his wrist fall limp over the edge of the bed. She takes it between her wizened hands and traces his veins, presses his pulse point, then presses the center of his palm. “Tell me about these dreams you have,” she says, tracing over his palm lines and then folding his fingers into his palm one by one. Jongin shoots Yoonah a glare. She returns his gaze steadily, apologetic but defiant.

“I’m not having any dreams,” sulks Jongin. Yoonah sighs loudly.

“I want to help you,” says Selah. “Your nightmares aren’t helping you any. They give you neither revelation, nor guidance, nor comfort.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” mumbles Jongin. Yoonah settles by his bed as though she intends to stay there all night.

“I’ll mix you something now,” says Selah. “It’ll do you good for certain. But not as much good as you’d do yourself, by telling me.” The grind of mortar and pestle punctuates her words, and woodland scents tingle Jongin’s senses. “If you’re not ready to tell me, or don’t want to tell me ever, say so. Don’t lie.” 

Jongin doesn’t know why he has to lie here listening to her lecturing him. He shoots a glare at the back of Yoonah’s head, resting against one of the bedposts. She probably doesn’t feel it, because she doesn’t move in the slightest.

“Your Highness,” says Selah gently, “Drink up.” She places the cup against his lips, and Jongin feels strange because other than his mother when she was alive, Yoonah is the only one to ever feed him personally. He drinks, and it’s not unpleasant like he expected. It tastes like its scent. As though its taste is just a heightened, concentrated scent. It’s not very strong as flavours go, especially to one accustomed to rich food and constantly sickened by it like he is, but it still overwhelms him and he has to take breaks between sips. Selah holds the chalice until he’s done. Her old arms don’t tire the way they should.

“Thank you,” says Jongin, once there’s no more left to drink. Selah lowers the chalice and says, “I’ve given Yoonah an ointment. It cools feverish minds. Whenever you find yourself thinking too much and too flurried, call on her to massage it into your temples.”

“I will.”

Selah cups his face with a leathery palm, and Jongin, startled, puts his hand over hers as though to wrench hers away. But at the gentle look in her eyes, he stills, and she removes her caress. Jongin rubs the back of his hand over his cheek, so that the rough graze of his large rings chases away the remnants of that motherly touch. 

Yoonah takes a cloth-covered pot from Selah, and goes back to her place by the bedpost, keeping it in her lap. When Selah leaves the candlelight, Jongin speaks, almost as though someone else is reeling the words out. “I keep dreaming about burnings.”

Selah turns back. Jongin startles, again, when she blinks wetness from her eyes and says, voice rough and trembling, “Fear not, Prince. I’ll make them stop. Just, tell me more.” She hastens to his bedside. “Tell me everything.”

And Jongin does. It’s as though, after the first confession was tugged out of him, he can’t help himself anymore. He half expects Selah to touch him again in an attempt of comfort, maybe put her hand over his where he crumples the sheets in his tight, trembling fist, but after his reaction to her previous attempt, she doesn’t. She doesn’t reach out. Only listens.

“It’s no wonder that your nightmares have increased since you’re attending the burnings,” she says once he’s finished. “I already approached your father when Yoonah first told me what you’re going through. I told him the burnings just aggravate it, but he’s convinced they’ll immunise you instead.”

“He wants to force you to be okay, more like,” Yoonah cuts in, “and man up and stop having scary dreams and be okay with the burnings, enjoy them even. Wake up one day as the bloodthirsty warrior you used to be.” Jongin grins at the hint of scorn in her tone. It’s not everyday that he gets her to directly criticise the King.

She is right, too; the King envisions Jongin as a specific kind of heir, one who wars and kills mercilessly to expand his lands, one who spreads fear in his name. The King wants Jongin to extend his glory in ways that definitely entail bloodshed, plenty of it. But Jongin has known for a while now that he wants none of it. He can still kill, but he leans towards the quick and clean, not the elaborate and ritualised. He can still kill… just not the people the King wants him to kill.

He can’t fucking burn anyone, basically. Not witches, not commoners mistaken for witches, not even the ones who burn them. He’d like to slice off a choice few of their heads one day, though. Soon.

“It would’ve been best for you to not see burnings, but since we have no choice in the matter, you’ll have to work on the dreams themselves, and not on their stimulants.” Selah brings out a piece of cinnamon bark for Jongin to chew. Since he didn’t mind the taste of the medicine, liked it rather, he keeps the bark enfolded in his palm for when the aftertaste of it fades. “It’s telling that you’ve seen so many burnings, but your dreams are always about Baekhyun being torched.”

“What do I do?” mumbles Jongin, sniffing the cinnamon bark. Yoonah smilingly smoothes his hair away from his sticky forehead. Jongin is still clutching the sheets with one hand, but his grip has relaxed, and smelling the bark comforts him.

“The burnings seem to trigger your memories of Baekhyun being burned, every single time,” replies Selah. “Those are the strongest memories in your subconscious, since you keep repressing them only to have them stimulated by what you witness, conscious stimulants. What you must do is strengthen other memories. Good ones.”

Jongin nibbles off the edge of the bark, nodding.

“Focus on happy memories of Baekhyun. Call them up from every part of your being. Call them up as often as you can. Bad ones will inevitably surface with them, but you will pour all your energies into remembering the good ones. Do it with determination, with devotion, with desperation if you will, as though your life depends on it.” Selah opens a drawstring pouch and gives him a handful of cinnamon bark pieces, to keep. “I will give you my preparations regularly, for enhancing concentration and recall. You will get through this.”

“Thank you,” says Jongin, smiling faintly at the slivers and rolls of bark in his palm. He closes his fist over them. He can’t promise that he will do this. He can’t promise that he will be able to. But the memory of someone like Baekhyun shouldn’t be interlaced with so much pain. Not Baekhyun, tousled and tumbled, who smiled up round, shiny bubble-cheeks, who was warm and sweet and magical, who made Jongin so happy. 

Thoughts of Baekhyun shouldn’t be laced with so much pain when he made Jongin so happy.

♛

Baekhyun’s eyelids weigh down even as he cracks them open. He sees Yixing looming over him, blurred at first and then sharpened into focus. He realises he’s in Yixing’s lap. Treetops loom over both of them. Yixing presses his limbs as though relieving him from aches in his muscles. “Baekhyun. Who am I?”

Baekhyun huffs out a breath. “Yixing.” Yixing relaxes visibly.

“What happened back there?” asks Baekhyun, content to have Yixing massage him more. Jolts of air and warmth seep into his skin and settle in his bones. He feels wide awake.

“You fainted,” says Yixing, biting his lip, worried again. “I brought you out here to give you air.”

“You could’ve just given me that mouth-to-mouth,” says Baekhyun mischievously.

Yixing deadpans, “I don’t make out with children.”

“I’m not a child!” hoots Baekhyun, laughing when Yixing squeezes him harder in a disciplinary way.

They’re silent for a while, save for Baekhyun’s pleased hums when Yixing rubs strength into him. “...You’re different somehow,” says Yixing eventually.

Baekhyun widens his eyes. “I am?”

“You’re more mature somehow,” says Yixing. “You’ve been a naive, helpless child, and now you wake up suddenly… less so.” All done, he sits back on his haunches, looking at Baekhyun seriously. “Did some of your memories return? Are you, perhaps, more of the man you were?”

When Baekhyun doesn’t answer, folding his arms under his head cockily, Yixing persists, “This is important, we need to talk about this. Is that why you fainted? You couldn’t handle the surge of memories?”

“I couldn’t handle just the one,” drawls Baekhyun, but the carefully controlled nonchalance in his voice is belied by his face. 

Yixing’s voice softens. “I know it’s hard, but we have to talk about it.”

Baekhyun purses his lips, and it slowly turns into a pout. Yixing sees the vulnerable child again. “Why?” whines Baekhyun.

“Junmyeon lets me take care of you in hopes that your memories will return someday,” says Yixing. “And if you want to understand why he protects you, we have to talk about your memories.”

“Well, I am curious about that,” says Baekhyun, and Yixing’s chest seizes painfully, because Baekhyun still has that childish playfulness, but the equally childlike acceptance of someone taking care of him- no cynicism, no questioning, just acceptance, as though care and nurture were the natural state of things- it’s gone. Completely.

“I wanna go home,” says Baekhyun childishly, with the full dose of petulance. “Come onnn. I wanna steal straw from the roof.” Yixing’s heart steadies again, because Baekhyun still thinks of home as Yixing’s cottage. He hasn’t lost that yet.

“You can’t make a habit of it, or I won’t have a roof anymore.” Yixing dimples at Baekhyun, an owl’s hollow in a juniper tree. He holds his hand out, and Baekhyun catches it, propelling himself up with an ‘oof’ and grinning back at him.

They start back for home, and Yixing insists on holding Baekhyun’s hand all the way there. Baekhyun makes a show of protesting, but he looks at their swinging hands and smiles his curvy, bunch-cheeked smile, and he can’t hold back from skipping every few steps.

Baekhyun shuffles into Yixing’s cottage, smiling up at the thatched roof before setting down his sack on the log table inside. Yixing told him birds won’t necessarily make nests on a roof just because it’s thatched, and that they’ve no reason to make their nests on any roof when there’s an abundance of trees around for that very purpose, but he won’t stop hoping nonetheless. He likes birds. Even if he likes deer better. Baekhyun takes out the contents of his sack one by one and places them on the table, including the arrow. Seeing it again reminds him of the herd of deer scattering, and he pouts. He wants to tame a deer and keep it. It also reminds him of that man, with skin like warm earth and nicer lips than Kyungsoo, and he pouts deeper, because he wants to tame him and keep him, too.

“What’s this?” Yixing snaps him out of his thoughts by picking up the arrow and examining its tip.

“An arrow,” says Baekhyun, pushing his lips back into his cheeks to reveal rows of tiny teeth.

“No snark.” Yixing rolls his eyes. “Where did you find it?”

Baekhyun tells him about the procession of men on horses, and the man among them who scattered the herd of deer. Yixing nods thoughtfully, and Baekhyun can tell that he knows, somehow, who he’s talking about. And that makes him curious. Particularly about the one man he’s hesitant to mention, with chiselled features and sun-drenched skin. Baekhyun pouts. It’s only Yixing, but he feels too self-conscious to describe him out loud, as if his dumb crush will speak itself into his words.

“Do you believe in love at first sight?” he chooses to say instead, because he can’t fathom feeling so much from just seeing a person, once. It maybe goes beyond a dumb crush. It’s still dumb- way more dumb, actually- but if it’s a crush, it’s  _ huge _ .

“I don’t,” says Yixing, laughing softly. “Attraction can happen at first sight. Not love.”

“Yeah,” mumbes Baekhyun, fiddling with the feathers at the end of the arrow.

“You’re asking different kinds of questions now,” Yixing adds. “Do you feel… the difference from before you fainted and now?”

Baekhyun frowns. “Kind of. I can’t figure out how I worked then.”

Yixing laughs, a little sadly. “It wasn’t so long ago, you know. You talk as though you went through the ordinary duration of a childhood.”

Baekhyun says, “Aw, am I growing up too fast for you?” and laughs with him. He doesn’t know where the conviction comes from, but Baekhyun thinks he’s on a road of inevitable change. He was always grown up, but somehow, he regressed. And now he’s catching up.

“Oh, hey.” Baekhyun sits up, reminded. “I told you what you wanted to know. Now you tell me. Why’d I faint?”

Yixing sighs. “What did you see before you blacked out? Baekhyun, what do you  _ remember _ ?”

♛

Jongin wonders whether the first time he met Baekhyun counts as a happy memory. It probably does. Because he remembers it not purely as he experienced it then- more jealousy and hostility than anything else- but as he thinks of it now, adulterated with nostalgia and the pain of yearning for a simpler, happier past. Mixed in with a healthy dose of deprecation for his younger self.

He is hostile to Baekhyun. To this upstart, sneaking off the streets into the palace grounds and somehow wriggling his way into everyone’s hearts so that everyone from the stableboy to the kitchen staff wants to keep him. They convince the king that they’ll train him to be useful to the running of the palace. But none of it convinces Jongin.

Little Jongin watches little Baekhyun, fluffy-haired and fluffy-cheeked, gambol in the royal gardens and sneak morsels from the royal feasts before they leave the kitchens to be served. Little Jongin watches little Baekhyun smile his fluffy cheeks fluffier and be petted on his fluffy head, and little Jongin gnashes his teeth.

He is hostile to Baekhyun because he is jealous. Jongin used to be the favourite of the dancing girls, prancing and twirling to the dances they teach him, basking in their praises and delight. But their new favourite is Baekhyun, even though he clumsily trips over his own little feet and has no grace, every time he flubs they only coo and take to him more. It all makes Jongin feel that everyone has only been nice to him until that point because he is the Crown Prince. They don’t really care for him, not a bit. Baekhyun is everyone’s favourite and he is no one’s. He is never good enough, even for his father.

One day, Baekhyun hides behind one of the tapestries and jumps out when Jongin passes by, causing him to scream embarrassingly. It is the last straw. Burning with humiliation, Jongin tackles Baekhyun to the ground. It is wonderful having Baekhyun pinned under him, at his mercy. Jongin intends to punish him as he deserves, vent all his frustration at the boy in a single encounter, though he has no clear idea how to go about it. 

“You need to learn your place,” says Jongin, as intimidatingly as he can. “I’ve had enough of it. You’re going to wish you were never born.”

Baekhyun looks panicked, much to Jongin’s satisfaction. Taking big gulps of air, Baekhyun blubs, “I’m sorry, Highness, I- I swear I thought it wasn’t you- I was waiting for Kyungsoo!”

“What would the stableboy’s son be doing in the halls outside my chambers?” growls Jongin. Baekhyun’s mention of Kyungsoo reminds him that he should censure him, too. It is Kyungsoo who found Baekhyun fast asleep in a pile of hay in the stable and didn’t report him to the guards to be ousted immediately.

“Okay, fine, I was w-waiting to scare you, but I just w-wanted you to p-play with me,” sniffs Baekhyun, tears now pouring down his fluffy cheeks. Jongin tries not to be taken in by his reddened button nose, by his enormous pout and pink cheeks. His streaming eyes only  _ look _ innocent, Jongin reminds himself. “I just w-want to be your friend,” hiccups Baekhyun. His pout trembles in the aftershock of every hiccup.

That does it. To Jongin it sounds like “I just want you to like me.” Jongin internally preens. If Baekhyun wants to gain his favour, then he does know his place, and he has his priorities right, even if he misjudges the means. It still rankles how Baekhyun is everyone’s darling. That is supposed to be him, Jongin, the Crown Prince. That is the natural order of things. But if everyone’s favourite is trying to gain favour with him, Jongin- that places Jongin above him. That makes him powerful again.

Jongin clambers off Baekhyun and stands, looming over him. Baekhyun lies there, snuffling. It cements Jongin’s approval that he waits for Jongin’s command before moving in the slightest. “You may stand,” says Jongin grandly. Baekhyun gets to his feet and wipes his nose on the hem of his robe.

“You dare to wish for the friendship of the Prince himself? Do you not know your place?”

Baekhyun flinches. Jongin feels… kind of bad. Just a little.

“You shouldn’t be seeking my friendship at all, but if you must, the only way to do it that wouldn’t be utter impudence, is groveling at my feet and begging for it,” says Jongin. “I’m making this allowance for you only because you’re  _ so _ pitiful.”

Baekhyun narrows his eyes. “I’m not begging.”

Jongin huffs in surprise and near-disbelief. “You were begging me for forgiveness earlier.”

“That’s ‘cos…” Baekhyun shuffles his feet. “I was scared. You might order them to cut off my hands and legs.”

“I can still do that, you know,” says Jongin casually. “So you wanted to scare me but you got scared instead, huh?” he mocks.

“You got scared!” yelps Baekhyun, pointing accusingly. “You got scared first! You screamed like a girl when I jumped out the curtain!”

“No I didn’t,” shouts Jongin in his turn. “You dare insult the Crown Prince?”

Baekhyun sniffles. “You’re lying! This isn’t fair!”

“Fine,” Jongin turns away. “You’ve lost your chance at being friends with me, since you can’t even listen to what I say.”

“No!” Baekhyun catches the hem of Jongin’s expensive robe. “I’ll listen to you,” he mewls, “please!”

Jongin, victorious and grinning broadly, spins around and hugs him. “If you prove your loyalty to me, then you can be my right hand man,” he says proudly, all notions of making Baekhyun beg at his feet forgotten. Baekhyun nods into his chest.

“By the way, are you older than me?”

Baekhyun nods into his chest again. Jongin thinks Baekhyun might be rubbing his nose a rawer red, and gently breaks the hug. Baekhyun looks awed, almost dazed. Jongin smirks, self-satisfied.

“Well I’m your Prince, so it doesn’t matter how old you are. You have to respect me.”

Baekhyun nods obediently.

“You’re older than me yet you’re shorter,” snickers Jongin. Baekhyun pouts. Jongin fights the urge to enfold him in a hug again.

♛

Baekhyun sits glumly at the table, fist under chin, until Yixing sets a tumbler of warm hemp milk in front of him. Baekhyun cradles it with both hands, takes a sip, sighs.

“I know it’s a lot to take in,” Yixing says lamely.

Baekhyun’s lips lift, faint and wry. “I thought you just found me unconscious and woke me up, you know. I thought I didn’t remember anything because that’s how you found me. And now you tell me I was… dead.”

Yixing is silent as Baekhyun takes another sip. Then he says, “Are you happy I brought you back?”

“Oh, definitely,” Baekhyun frowns. “I just can’t figure out why. I mean, living is fun and all, but I also feel like there’s something I left behind.”

“Tell me more.” Yixing folds his hands atop the table. 

“I don’t have any idea what.” Baekhyun sighs. The milk warmed his throat, so his voice vibrates warmth on its way. It’s very pleasant. “It could be just the whole not remembering thing. Knowing there’s things I’ve forgotten. This niggling feeling.”

“Must be annoying,” says Yixing softly.

“It’s unbearable! I don’t know whether it was better before, when I didn’t know I had anything to remember. Or now, when I’ve… started getting something back, but the niggling feeling eats me up alive.”

“Think of it this way,” says Yixing, “What you’ve forgotten might be important, so this is a good thing.”

“...What if… after I remember, I wish it never came back to me?” Baekhyun clutches the tumbler, pressing both palms to it, but the milk isn’t warm anymore.

“At this point, I think the memories are going to flow back to you whether you want them to or not.” Yixing bites his lip, almost apologetic. “There’s not much you can do except reconcile yourself to it.” 

Baekhyun softens. “It’s not your fault, even if I remember something I’d rather not.”

Yixing smiles. Sadly. “Thanks for saying that.”

“I mean, sure, you didn’t ask me whether I wanted to come back alive. But there’s no way to ask a dead person whether they want to come back, so.” Baekhyun leans back, grinning from one high, shiny point of a cheek to the other. He’s so immensely satisfied when Yixing laughs at that, upchucks the laughter from deep in his belly onto the table.

When Yixing breathes steady again, Baekhyun is still sitting there grinning. “You look the Cheshire cat that got the cream,” comments Yixing.

“Speaking of bringing dead people back,” Baekhyun chooses to say, grin unfaltering, “can you bring yourself back when you die?”

Yixing chuckles, the spent hiccup at the end of a bellyful of upchucks. “Can’t. Come help with dinner now.”

Baekhyun gapes. “Why?” He shuffles to his feet, bringing the tumbler to the sink and scrubbing the inside with a lump of coir. Yixing dumps a chanterelle whole into the cauldron. 

“When a witch dies, their magic dies too.” Yixing crushes a clove of garlic. “It’s why every magical deed they’ve ever done comes undone. The magic loses all potency once the witch is dead. The spells won’t hold.”

Baekhyun roughly chops a rutabaga, which Yixing sweeps into the cauldron as well. “Since the magic can’t be called up from anywhere once the witch is gone, once I die I stay dead,” he continues.

“Bummer,” mumbles Baekhyun, chopping thyme. Yixing adds it when he’s done, dimpling. Baekhyun thinks of how they grew the thyme themselves in the window boxes. Yixing would go to them at the start of every day, throw open the windows to bring the morning inside, fill the house with sunshine and the smell of awakened leaves. He’d smile down at the little herbs as they pushed through the earth towards his presence. Once they grew a bit of stalk, they strained towards him, like sunflowers towards the sun. And now Baekhyun is butchering the tiny, gentle beings he’d raised together with Yixing. He should feel something. But he doesn’t. Yixing should feel something. But he doesn’t appear to.

“My powers are supposed to heal the wounded or ill, and enhance growth. Not revive the dead,” Yixing continues. “What I did with you, I’m not supposed to do more than a few times in my life.” Baekhyun stills mid-stir, the ladle resting limply against the rim. “If I push it, it could kill me,” Yixing finishes gravely.

“You didn’t have to,” says Baekhyun, voice small. Cute, thinks Yixing.

“Hey, you’re only the first time I’ve done it!” Yixing is cheery on purpose. “I’m far from pushing it.” He ruffles Baekhyun’s hair as he crosses the kitchen to where the cutlery is kept. Baekhyun ducks, almost falling into the cauldron himself, and Yixing laughs so hard that the paired plates and bowls he has piled in his hands are in danger of toppling.

They ladle out servings, smattering them with pepper. Yixing brings out some unleavened bread. “I think you’ll be cute even after all your memories are back,” he declares. Baekhyun doesn’t respond, tearing off the bread roughly with his teeth, as though he’s tearing meat.

♛

Scholar Miran, Jongin’s history instructor, has Jongin trace over countless maps of his dynasty’s territory as it has changed over wars and successors. Jongin is bored to tears. “Do you see people anywhere on these maps, Jongin?” asks Scholar Miran, and Jongin, who knows exactly how he’s expected to answer, says, “No, only land.”

“Land is all that needs to be protected,” nods Scholar Miran, pleased. “People are secondary to land, Your Highness, people can be sacrificed to protect the land. What is your inborn duty?”

Jongin, who knows exactly how he’s supposed to answer, says, “My inborn duty is to protect the land before all else.”

“If another dynasty wants to overthrow ours, if another ruler wants to usurp your throne, what do you do?”

“I slay them and protect the throne,” says Jongin automatically.

“If people who you allow into the borders, for trade or refuge, threaten your control over the land, what do you do?”

Jongin, who knows exactly how he’s supposed to answer, says, “I slay them and retain my control over the land.”

“If- God Forbid- your own people turn against you, your own subjects, and want to oust you from the land you are born to protect, what do you do?”

Jongin knows exactly how he’s supposed to answer. He’s confident his own people won’t turn against him- he can’t imagine what could possibly lead to them denouncing him as their ruler. He knows nobles sometimes slyly plan coups. He supposes that’s what this is about. Unfortunately, he can’t ask Scholar Miran if that’s what he means, because he isn’t allowed to ask questions. “If my subjects want me to give up the land and the throne, I slay them and protect the land and the throne,” Jongin says, with some relief that they have finally reached the end of the lesson.

Later, he finds Baekhyun in the gardens, with his arms around the feathery neck of a white peacock. “How were lessons?” asks Baekhyun.

Jongin knows that Baekhyun is curious. And perhaps a little envious of him, having knowledge poured into him. But Jongin cannot find anything to value in the knowledge that is poured into him. It only makes him gag. “Horrid,” says Jongin morosely. Baekhyun doesn’t prod. Instead, he guides the sunlight to glimmer off the enormous fountain at the center of the garden so that it creates many little rainbows. Jongin dances, stretching into many little leaps that sweep across the little rainbow arches. Jongin leaps, his spirits lift, and the gentle movements of Baekhyun’s pretty hands make the rainbows shift and dance with him.

♛

Baekhyun goes to the clearing again, hoping for a glimpse of his crush, the man with skin like warm earth and a voice like one of Yixing’s warm drinks. But all he sees are deer. He pouts. Then he notices a fawn, its ears flattening against its head as it forages, and his pout relaxes. He approaches it cautiously, but it isn’t alarmed even when he reaches his hand out, and the other deer ignore him. It turns its liquid gaze on him and, when he pulls up a bunch of grass and proffers it to the fawn, it snuffles into his hand, nuzzling his palm. Baekhyun’s chest expands with joy.

He puts his arms lovingly around the fawn’s slender neck and interlocks his palms. He walks along with the fawn as it forages, hands clasped securely around its neck except when he tears off leaves for it, the ones it can’t reach. Patches of sunlight scatter on the fawn, on the forest floor, on Baekhyun’s skin; the fine hairs on his arm glimmer wherever the patches fall. Baekhyun frowns. There’s a gnawing in his chest, gnawing through the joy.

A flash of memory leaves him winded, knees hitting the forest floor. He gasps, his hands slithering off the fawn. He can hear his crush’s voice, steady, almost flat: “They walked on together through the wood, Alice with her arms clasped lovingly around the soft neck of the Fawn, till they came out into another open field, and here the Fawn gave a sudden bound into the air, and shook itself free from Alice’s arms. “I’m a Fawn!” it cried out in a voice of delight.”

He screws his eyes shut, but nothing else surfaces. When he opens his eyes again, the fawn is gone. The sunlight, filtered through the treetops, makes patches on the forest floor. Baekhyun watches a ladybird traverse one patch, a scuttling struggle that finally culminates in its escape from the false fairy ring. Even after the ladybird is gone, Baekhyun stares at the patch of light while the gnawing grows inside him.

♛

Jongin trails his fingers over the line of Baekhyun’s body. From the nape of his neck, the soft hairs raised by the night, over the shoulders. The tight, sylph-like waist, and the wondrous swell of his hips, accommodating equally wondrous thighs. Jongin itches to see the undulation of waist into hip unmarred by fabric. “Your body is like a woman’s,” he whispers, loosening the string of Baekhyun’s robe.

Baekhyun shivers. “I’m not a woman.” He raises his hips slightly off the bed so that Jongin can slide the rest of his robe out from underneath, so that his mole-constellated skin is carressed only by the moonlight through the arch windows and by Jongin’s skimming fingers.

Jongin mouths, “I know,” hot breath raising the down on Baekhyun’s neck before warming other exposed skin- heated honey poured over the creamiest milk.

He knows his body will ache, inside and out, to hold Baekhyun again, but still Jongin mouths at empty air, moves against the sheets, touches himself, imagines he is touching someone else, and remembers. Remembers until his head is filled, fuzzy, floating. Once his vision clears, Baekhyun is dead again, gone again; Baekhyun is only in his head. Jongin is alone.

♛

Jongin is shaking. 

The room is vast, empty, so that the sounds of his own breath and heartbeat seem extraordinarily loud. The ceiling is painted, and reflected on the floor. Jongin sees the overlay of coloured light beams through the stained-glass windows over the reflections on the floor and remembers Baekhyun merging them into new colours and separating them into new colours, like a kaleidoscope. Baekhyun loved playing with light filtered through latticework the most, but he loved light through stained-glass windows second best.

Jongin follows a beam of blue light to the installation of ashes. He’s shaking and crying and remembering, but his hands hold the pot, bring it down and lift the lid.

Baekhyun’s ashes are gone. The pot is as empty as this room. Jongin runs a finger round the bottom of the pot and examines it after. It’s a few specks of Baekhyun. 

Jongin hears screaming, bouncing off the walls of the vast room, shrill enough that the windows should sliver into many-coloured shards, but they don’t. And then he realises the screaming is in his own head.

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to those who commented on the previous chapter! thank you for deciding to accompany me on this journey despite your misgivings. it means more to me than i can say.  
> i'd love to know your thoughts after this instalment. as always, you can also yell at me over at [twitter](https://twitter.com/trashsshi) and [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.qa/trashsshi).


	3. Sunbeam Motes

Baekhyun spends his days roaming the woods like one lost, trying to find a path in the wilderness. He wanders as though he has somewhere to go, something to find, but really he doesn’t. The woods have caught hold of him in an uncanny fascination, though, because he enters parts of the woods he _ knows _ he has never been to before and is hit with a strange feeling of deja vu.

“I must have spent a lot of time in the woods before I was burnt,” Baekhyun tells Yixing, moodily stomping wildflowers under a pestle. Recently it is as though there are two of him, he feels more like a stranger to himself instead of feeling like he knows himself better. He hates being unsettled in his own skin.

“I think you did,” says Yixing, carefully sweeping the pollen that scatters into a clean snuffbox. “You normally didn’t accompany him during his hunting trips, but he didn’t only come to the woods to hunt- I fancy this was one of the few places you two could be alone and undisturbed. I’m sure his bed was a favourite spot, too, but well. He must have wanted to get away from the palace often.”

“Him who? What are you talking about?”

Yixing giggles annoyingly. “This is all speculation, don’t worry about it.”

Baekhyun clenches his whole face. “Still. Explain.”

“There’s nothing to explain, I just think you were quite close to the Prince in your previous life.”

“Who’s the Prince?” says Baekhyun.

“I’ve brought his portrait,” says Jongdae, who has just entered the cottage together with Kyungsoo. Jongdae has a feathered hat on his head and a large vellum scroll under his arm. Over the last few weeks Jongdae brought a new face everyday for Baekhyun to memorise, and those scrolls were stored in an old wooden chest after Kyungsoo convinced the termites to leave. Baekhyun often takes the scrolls out to memorise who is who; he finds he needs to revise constantly or he can’t hold on to the associations. Yixing and Junmyeon have been hoping that some of those faces would trigger memories for him, but so far they haven’t.

Baekhyun unrolls the scroll, aware of all their eyes on him, Kyungsoo’s especially intense for some reason. 

Baekhyun recognises the face and blushes furiously. His crush. Toffee skin and thick lips. Dark, hooded eyes, as though something looms behind him, chasing his sleep away. It’s not just the sharp strokes of the paintbrush, it is how Baekhyun remembers him from that single glimpse, all hardened edges. Baekhyun wishes he could remember different expressions on him. Baekhyun wishes he knew what those dark eyes looked like when they shone with emotion instead of just emptiness and the fleeting flash of rage, like lightning against a stormy sky. He wishes he could remember what they looked like. They might have once held fondness, held love.

“Is he your love at first sight?” says Yixing, twinkling.

“Shut up!” Baekhyun turns the scroll over to hide the face against the table, jumps up from his chair and runs off into the woods.

He wanders for what could be hours. He cannot be sure, even though he has become better at noticing the minute changes in the scattered patches of light that make it through the treetops. Baekhyun shivers with that feeling of deja vu again. He doesn’t remember these paths- and yet, some part of him does. He is steered here unconsciously.

It is only when he finds himself back in a certain clearing that he realises it. There is a tree at the edge of the clearing, and there is no wound from an arrow in its bark, but that is because Baekhyun brought Yixing here to seal its skin. He hid in this very tree and espied the Prince.

He thinks he just goes where his feet take him, but it seems that they mostly take him along the deer-worn paths. He often crosses paths with deer. He strolls up on them minding their own business or grazing as a herd, but they always ignore him. None of the deer he meets behave like they know him at all. Sometimes a fawn allows him to pet it, but as forbearance, not friendship.

Baekhyun doesn’t know how much longer he can hold on to the words in his head, talking of someone called Alice who walks through the woods with a fawn. They are beautiful words, to be sure, and he loves them better for being spoken with the Prince’s voice, but he turns those words over and over in his mind until they shrink, like pebbles sandpapered by the sea. He asks Yixing who Alice is, but Yixing doesn’t know, and when he asks Junmyeon, repeating all the words verbatim, Junmyeon says it doesn’t seem like a useful scrap of memory.

“Whoever Alice may be, you’d make better use of your time if you cared who these people are,” he says, pointing to the chest with the scrolls in it. And then he adds that Alice is probably not even real, or part of some other world. “Stories have a use,” says Junmyeon, “but only the right stories. Memories have a use, but only the right memories.”

Baekhyun counts deer’s spots whenever he can get away. From the chores in the cottage, from helping Junmyeon, from learning faces. He is sick of trying to be of use to his family, especially to Junmyeon, but never being sure whether his attempts are successful. He is sicker of not being able to remember anything of use. Junmyeon keeps asking him about the castle, its layout and its passageways; he also keeps asking about the Prince. “If you must remember anything, focus on these,” he says, and Baekhyun keeps trying until he is sick of trying. Patches of sunlight run across the floor like live things, and dust motes glitter in the sunbeams that shine through the cottage windows. Baekhyun opens his palms under them as though light can be held, but he always ends up trapping nothing but a trace of warmth in his closed fist. The days are long, and yet they’re gone as quickly as the warmth that can’t be contained in his palm for more than a few minutes. His mind goes blank watching the light change, and before he knows it the moon is up and the birds who have been bringing twigs to a heap in front of the house have flown away for the night. Kyungsoo brings some of the wood with him when he enters the cottage, and Yixing makes them a fire. They have dinner, and maybe introduce Baekhyun to a new scroll or two, new faces. Then they sleep, and Baekhyun sees nothing in his dreams, nothing that could be a faint or distorted memory. Nothing but the sunlight flaring through his eyelids the next morning.

♛

Selah is visiting Jongin everyday, and miraculously, the King approves.

“What did you tell him?” says Jongin.

“That I’m strengthening your constitution,” says Selah. “He thinks you’re a namby-pamby milksop. I said I’d ply you with drinks that fire up your masculinity.” Yoonah giggles. Jongin ignores her.

“Will I have to act accordingly?” says Jongin gloomily.

“Just go hunting more often, ask for a prostitute or two, and it should convince him,” says Yoonah.

“I’m not killing anything,” says Jongin.

“Say you’ve lost your touch,” says Yoonah. “Or tell Changmin to fell something impressive and credit it to you.”

Jongin follows that advice, and he leads his entourage in shooting boars and a wood grouse or three. When the feathers are plucked out of the wood grouses before cooking them, the courtesans save them to make ornamental fans, the down tufted at the core and the tail feathers at the widest outer arc. The King is fanned with them during his meals and he seems more affable towards Jongin than before, but the difference is negligible, thinks Jongin, for he still has to attend the burnings. 

Strangely, though, the burnings don’t affect him like they used to. He isn’t indifferent to them by any means, but he is able to sit through them. The only times he feels a stone drop in his stomach is when he recognises a witch, because every witch burnt is a blow to his big plan. He and Changmin recognise Chanyeol the moment he is dragged into court, even though he is beaten almost beyond recognition. His raspy voice is broken, and he doesn’t scream for long. It’s such a pity, thinks Jongin. At his peak form, Chanyeol should have been able to raze the King’s army to the ground in a gigantic fire. It would have been so fitting if the King and all his pawns were to meet their ends in a fire started by one of the very witches they wanted to burn at the stake.

Jongin thinks the plan may have to change.

“We’ve never considered a rebellion from the inside,” whispers Jongin to Changmin. It is the first time Changmin has entered the Prince’s chambers. 

“Unless we found a way to smuggle the witches inside the castle, we wouldn’t be able to manage it,” says Changmin. “So far, the King has given Siwon explicit instructions that the army is to capture witches in large numbers only when the witches themselves organise a rebellion. Otherwise, Siwon has to capture one witch at a time. The witches are to be burned one at a time.”

“But why?” asks Yoonah. 

“He knows that despite the army using witchcrafted armour and weapons, they have no chance against raw magic en masse. They can deal with one witch at a time with ease, but if it was one soldier against one witch, the army would become spell soup.” Changmin growls out a laugh that’s all teeth, his mouth barely opening. “The witches aren’t able to freely use magic against the army because they can’t touch magical artifacts, but inconveniently for the King, the witches are a resourceful bunch. If they work together, they put together their skills to find a way to knock the army down without targeting their magic towards specific weapons or the soldiers.”

“For example, Minseok would normally just trap someone in ice by freezing them over, but since he can’t do that against artifacts, he erected walls of ice around the army. He walled them in and they were stuck there until backup came with boulders to break the ice,” Jongin explains to her. “When Minseok’s energy was drained after three walls he raised almost instantly, Junmyeon stepped in and put up the fourth wall; a magical barrier. All the army needed to do was break one of the ice walls, but until then they were sealed in.”

“Just as raw magic cannot target artifacts, artifacts cannot target raw magic,” adds Changmin. “So the army can’t wield their weapons on Minseok’s ice.”

“But they  _ can _ slice Minseok’s flesh,” says Jongin.

Yoonah winces. “But the witches escaped that time, right? The ice witch and the other one?”

Jongin turns away. “Junmyeon escaped. They caught Minseok later.” They waited until Minseok was drained of magical energy and attacked him before he could revitalise. That approach doesn’t work with witches like Junmyeon, whose raw magic is prolonged and persistent, but it is much too effective against witches like Minseok and Chanyeol, who draw their power from the elements.

“...So what's this about rebellion from the inside, and how can I help?” says Yoonah, when the depressed silence extends between them too long and Jongin looks like he’s going to start pacing again.

“Well, I really don’t want us to change plans. It makes me anxious,” begins Changmin, almost with relief as Jongin focuses on him again instead of withdrawing into the dark, closed-off opacity of his eyes. “But the original plan had been to wait until the artifacts’ magical energy runs out and then attack with raw magic.”

“The King obviously isn’t buying weaponry from witches anymore and no witches would be willing to sell to him now, even from other kingdoms,” says Jongin. 

“Has he tried, though?”

“He has approached enemy covens,” confirms Changmin, “but they don’t trust him because they know that he believes any magic is a threat. His fear isn’t limited to the coven here.”

“Nobody will sell artifacts to him now, and we were counting on the magical energy of the existing artifacts running out. Junmyeon’s coven had the same plan too, as far as I know they still have the same plan,” says Jongin. He sprawls across the bed, his robe falling open, and only Yoonah reacts, eyes roving over the newly revealed skin. Jongin continues, “But the witch burnings have become so frequent as of late that we’ve been forced to consider the possibility that by the time the artifacts’ magical energy gets worn out, nearly all the witches will have been massacred. We have to act before then.”

“We’d expected the army to be a lot less successful than they have been,” nods Changmin.

“The rate at which they’re going we have to change the plan,” says Jongin sleepily.

“Yes, obviously,” says Yoonah.

Changmin doesn’t say anything for a minute, and that is all Jongin is waiting for before giving in and crossing the threshold of sleep. He is hanging, half-dozing, when Changmin finally speaks. “It won’t be easy.”

Jongin smiles, his heavy-lidded eyes slipping closed. “It wasn’t going to be easy in any case.”

♛

Junmyeon has decided that leaving Baekhyun to wander isn’t doing much good where his memory is concerned. So Baekhyun is back to helping Junmyeon regularly, although he still cannot approach the cauldrons or sit near fires. Junmyeon’s fires are often bright blue or green flames, crackling coloured sparks, different from Kyungsoo’s orange-red fires which just smolder away. Baekhyun doesn’t differentiate in his hate. All fire is hot, catching, dangerous. Painful. And deadly, but he doesn’t know what it felt like to die, only the pain that came before.

Most of the time, Junmyeon sends him to collect materials from the forest. Baekhyun gets to stroll through the deer-worn paths, pet a few fauns (if he’s lucky) and climb a few trees, as well as make himself useful by collecting ingredients for spellwork. These include an array of roots, herbs, berries and wildflowers, as well as the occasional insect. Junmyeon gives him specific instructions on what he needs for whatever he happens to be making. Sometimes he’ll need to replenish his storage of some root, and will task Baekhyun with finding as many as he can. Junmyeon also often uses small animals, and animal bones, but usually Kyungsoo brings him those.

Baekhyun grinds wildflowers with a pestle, pulps berries, washes roots and skins them when required. He pins wriggling insects to Junmyeon’s runecloth and helps Yixing grow the herbs he brings from the forest in the patch of bare earth near Junmyeon’s house.

He is living well, he thinks, but his emptiness grows.

Maybe all he needs is a purpose. He doesn’t have the courage to approach Junmyeon for that directly, though. One day, while the leader of the coven grates bone marrow onto his runecloth and Baekhyun is supposed to revise his scrolls while Yixing influences the herbs, Baekhyun goes to the door with the Prince’s scroll held loosely in his hand and leans against the doorframe, watching Yixing. “Tell me why I have to memorise these faces,” he says. “I know you probably have your reasons for not telling me. But I’m not going to do anything without knowing why. Even the things you want me to remember- you have some kind of scheme in mind, some bigger purpose for me. I want to know what it is.”

To Baekhyun’s surprise, Junmyeon laughs and claps, abandoning the piece of bone to come sling a paternalising arm around Baekhyun’s shoulders. “Well, Yixing, your good little child is asking adult questions.”

“It is you who insisted on involving him in adult matters,” says Yixing, and it’s the first time Baekhyun has heard him sound so cold.

“You revived him for the same purpose,” says Junmyeon, grinning.

Confused, Baekhyun just says, “answer my questions instead of whatever it is you’re doing, or I won’t listen to you anymore.”

Yixing grimaces. “You’re better off not knowing, Baekhyun. You’re better off not remembering, too.”

Junmyeon pushes past Baekhyun with a snarl. Before he can do anything, Baekhyun shouts, “I’m sick of doing whatever you tell me to!”

Junmyeon stops. Yixing turns to him with pain twisting his mouth. “So you’ll do whatever Junmyeon tells you to?”

“Don’t tell me he doesn’t have my best interests at heart,” Baekhyun rolls his eyes, “I already know.”

“Come now, it’s just that there are other interests overriding yours,” says Junmyeon.

“So tell me what they are,” says Baekhyun.

“You’re going to assassinate the King,” says Junmyeon. “But that’s a change of plans. The initial plan had been to have your insider knowledge of the castle and of everyone around the King help us infiltrate the castle and attack them from the inside. But you haven’t been gaining back memories as much as I’d hoped; until now all you remember is that the Prince used to read out Alice in Wonderland to you, and that you died by burning. The King, too, has been capturing and killing more of my witches than I expected.”

“Can’t you simply plant someone else in the castle?”

“We do have a herbalist who is visiting the castle regularly to minister to the Prince, and she has been useful to us, but not as useful as we thought you would be. You grew up in the castle, with those people. And you’re a witch. You’re one of us. You have the Prince’s favour like no other.” Junmyeon’s voice softens. “A potent weapon indeed.”

“I don’t understand quite yet,” says Baekhyun, his stomach jolting slightly at the mention of the Prince. Perhaps the Prince is the key to his memories. Baekhyun hadn’t wondered about his past life until he saw the Prince that day and found himself enraptured by the planes of his face, by the dip in his collarbones that disappeared into his robes. By the cold gold on his warm earth skin. Perhaps the only way Baekhyun knows to yearn for the Prince is to yearn for a past life he knows nothing about.

“Let’s talk inside,” Yixing says abruptly. Behind him, the herbs have cowered, folding their leaves over their heads.

Yixing draws a chair for Baekhyun inside the house, and Junmyeon moves his work to their table. A feather drifts through the window and settles on the floor. “They’re hollow,” says Yixing, picking it up. “So you can dip them in ink and the ink will flow up. And when you put them to paper the ink will flow down.”

“I have no intention of teaching him how to ink runes,” says Junmyeon impatiently. “He can prick parchment for me, though.”

Baekhyun doesn’t like pricking parchment, for not only is it a task that requires caution and care, but it’s repetitive and pulls him deeper into his own head. But more than that, he dislikes the way the conversation is veering off course. “I know the King has been after our blood, but what good will assassinating him do? He’s not the only one who wants us purged, is he?”

“The Prince is on our side,” says Yixing.

“How come?”

“Probably because of you,” says Junmyeon. He places the whittled bone at one end of the table, gathers the bone marrow shavings in the runecloth into a heap and ties it into a bundle.

When Baekhyun just waits, uncomprehending, Junmyeon says, “The Prince was in love with you. He still is in love with you.”

“How do you know?”

“The herbalist told me. You’ll meet her soon; she will be the one to help you get into the castle.”

The afternoon passes by in a stream of Junmyeon’s voice and Yixing’s silence. Baekhyun begins to understand, piece by piece: He will infiltrate the castle and find the Prince first of all. The Prince is smitten with him, and will likely indulge him in his every fancy, so he will not only have a safe place in the castle but be allowed, if not assisted, by the Prince in the assassination of the King. All opposition to his presence in the castle as well as to the coven’s presence in the kingdom will be suppressed once the Prince replaces the King on the throne. 

Junmyeon tells him that he won’t be receiving any special training beforehand. “You only need to recall your magic,” says Junmyeon. “Of course, if you also get your memories back, that would be ideal, but since you’ve had no luck with that so far, focus on your magic. Once you channel it again, you’ll save us all.”

It all seems too simple. But even if things go wrong Baekhyun will have to rely on his wits, not on any training. “We simply don’t have the time,” says Junmyeon, “and there’s nothing I can teach you before you recall your magic anyway.” The fate of the coven rests on his shoulders and it is heavy to bear. Yixing looks crushed from the weight of Baekhyun’s fate alone.

“I’ll be okay,” says Baekhyun, although he doesn’t really believe it. None of this matters until he recalls his magic, but he can’t quite bring himself to wish for his magic never to return to him, despite the burden and the fear. Because he knows what the King is doing to the witches, however hard Yixing tries to insulate him from that knowledge. Snippets of overheard conversations. Empty graves in secret groves that are filled with a poppet doll and dirt. Yixing sometimes stealing away at night to hold Junmyeon’s shaking shoulders, while Baekhyun watches through a crack in the door, wide-eyed because Junmyeon is crying, Junmyeon is vulnerable for once. The visiting witches who don’t visit anymore. Kyungsoo who has become even quieter than he was before.

Baekhyun can glean enough to know that terrible things are happening where the trees don’t obscure the sky. Terrible things are happening to his family. He can’t carry on like this, with a carefree, oblivious facade. He can’t live with himself like this.

He chases spots of light on the grass, counts dew diamonds, finds ladybirds scuttling like shiny buttons, but he doesn’t find his magic. He does find the Prince, though.

He goes foraging for Junmyeon one day and that’s when he sees him. The Prince seems to have risen right out of the earth. He stands over a mop of dark feathers and says, “That’s enough.”

One of the men accompanying him on his hunt hoists up the dead bird and ties it to his saddle by its feet. “When do we act, Your Highness?”

“We mustn’t be hasty,” says the Prince, bottomless eyes scanning the trees. Baekhyun presses himself lower behind the bush until his chest is flat on the ground, heart thumping. “I’m afraid we don’t have what we need to kill him. We need magic. Smuggling a witch inside isn’t going to be easy.”

“You can use my sword, Your Highness,” says the man.

The Prince eyes the hilt and says, “You forget that my father is more accomplished in battle than even Siwon. If we are to kill him, we must do it dishonourably.”

The Prince is blazing when he utters these words, as though he expected the collective intake of breath that went around his entourage.

“Are you suggesting we hire an assassin, Your Highness?”

“Do you know of assassins who use magic?” says the Prince shortly. “Witches are unfortunately much too careful of meddling in things that don’t concern them, such as petty humans’ politics.”

“Pardon me, Your Highness, but this does concern them.”

“If one of them volunteers as an assassin, I will hardly oppose it. But I will not ask them to provide me one. They have their own versions of honour which would normally prohibit assassination, after all.” Baekhyun can’t see the Prince’s eyes anymore. “Not that Junmyeon particularly values honour- but he’s probably afraid that denouncing it, however necessary, would be a controversial decision within the coven.”

“...Are you counting on him resorting to that decision nevertheless, Your Highness?”

“I can’t wait long, Changmin.”

Baekhyun shivers. He doesn’t know what the Prince plans to do if Junmyeon doesn’t come through with an offer of an assassin, but he doesn’t want to find out. It could mess everything up. Especially as he knows now that only a witch can kill the King, that no ordinary warrior is cut out for the job, no matter how skilled.

The pressure on him to recall his magic is stronger than ever, but he decides not to tell Yixing or Junmyeon about this. There would be no point. It is all dependent on him anyway.

♛

Jongin can’t imagine why the King has summoned him. The king has had less and less to say to him as of late. After all, Jongin has been behaving how the King has always wanted him to behave. He has been hunting (or so it appears) and he has been on a rampage of virility (or so it appears) and he has composed himself well through all the recent witch burnings. Apart from attending each one from beginning to end, he has found that watching every burning does not bring Baekhyun’s burning to mind anymore. Focusing intensely on other, happier memories of Baekhyun, along with the herbal medicines, actually have helped Jongin as Selah said they would. His nightmares have almost stopped. Perhaps the knowledge that he will most probably not be enlisting the help of the witches has helped build indifference to the burnings. What’s important is that Jongin has conducted himself like the cold-blooded ruler the King wanted him to be. Maybe the King has summoned him to praise him, to tell him that he is doing well. But that kind of overt approval is so uncharacteristic of the King that Jongin can’t seriously consider it a possibility.

He encounters Yoonah leaving the King’s chambers just as he enters them. That in itself is nothing out of the ordinary, but he is startled by the blank mask of her face; even though she blinks in his direction her kohl-rimmed eyes are wide and unseeing. As she sweeps away in a whirl of perfume and glittering silks, Jongin wonders what was on her mind that she forgot to greet the Crown Prince. 

“Your Majesty, I hope I find you well.” Jongin bows deeply.

“With every witch purged I feel my own life increasing,” says the King, “I’ve never felt better. Sit next to me.” He pours out two tall glasses of liquor, handing one to Jongin when he sits next to him on the divan.

“How is hunting going?”

“No big game yet,” says Jongin with mock regret.

“I think you’re building momentum. I’d like you to kill something big, of course, something spectacular.”

“I haven’t come across anything of that scale in the woods.”

“Haven’t you?” The King smiles into his glass.

“No, I haven’t come across anything bigger than a boar in the woods lately,” says Jongin, puzzled. “You hunted the remaining elephants and tigers yourself, Father, when you were well.”

“That I did. But I didn’t kill all the big game in the woods, you’re wrong there. I left you something. It’ll be your biggest kill yet.”

“What is it?”

The King searches his face. “There’s a witch. Junmyeon. The next time you go to the woods, hunt him down.”

Shattering. The glass that slipped through Jongin’s fingers glitters jaggedly on the ground.

“I don’t understand,” says Jongin, “why… would you think me up to the job, Father? When not even Siwon can bring him to be burned?”

“This is your chance,” the King says obliquely, “to prove yourself to me.”

Prove what, Jongin wonders. His worth? Or his loyalty?

♛

Baekhyun has a meeting set up with the herbalist Junmyeon said they’d planted in the castle. She arrives with a gift of herbs, and seeing Yixing’s unrestrained smile Baekhyun relaxes too.

“This is the child,” says Selah, a confirmation, more statement than question. She cups Baekhyun’s face with one hand, wrinkled fingers smoothing his cheek. “I will make your job easy for you, child.”

“Thank you,” says Baekhyun.

Selah reveals that the King has shown much approval of her treatment of the Prince and has hinted that he’d like Selah to treat him too. “On the day that you are to kill him, I’ll give him something that will dull his senses and slow his reflexes.”

Junmyeon fetches some pounded roots and wildflowers, which Selah wraps in a gunnera leaf and stashes in her basket among the clinking vials and powders in boxes. Baekhyun steps out the door to see her off. Yixing accompanies her, to walk her out of the forest. Junmyeon is going along too; he has to remove and re-erect magical barriers after allowing Selah to pass through them. Selah isn’t a witch, so she can’t pass through them automatically.

Baekhyun has to watch the house, but he also wants to keep an eye out for their return, or for any other visiting witches. So he shuts the door behind him and stays standing outside, scrunching the grass between his toes until the gaps between his toes are slippery with dew. 

An eternity later, Kyungsoo comes by. “Junmyeon is on his way back,” he tells Baekhyun. “He’ll be here soon.”

“Good, I was getting so bored,” Baekhyun says. “You’d think living in the woods would be more exciting but I just spent the last half an hour looking for ladybugs in the grass.” Not even one shiny, spotty red button scuttled his way.

Kyungsoo smiles. Propelled by an urge he barely understands, Baekhyun picks straw off of Yixing’s thatched roof and puts it on Kyungsoo’s head.

“What are you doing?”

“You look good like this,” laughs Baekhyun, “like you’re meant to have straw in your hair.”

Kyungsoo stares at him, uncomfortably intense, as though he is trying to peel his face off to look at the hollows inside.

“What?” says Baekhyun. “You’re the one with straw in your hair. Is there something on me as well?” He touches his own face but there’s nothing.

“I have to show you something,” says Kyungsoo seriously.

“What is it?”

“Come with me.”

Instead of taking him back inside, Kyungsoo takes him to Junmyeon’s house.

“I’m supposed to be watching Yixing’s house,” says Baekhyun.

“That’s all right, nothing will come here without Junmyeon’s knowledge anyway. He has barriers surrounding the house.”

“That’s true, but I’ve never disobeyed his orders before,” says Baekhyun anxiously.

“I’ll explain, he’ll understand,” says Kyungsoo. “I’ve got to show this to you  _ now. _ ”

It’s nerve-wracking, but Baekhyun is also curious. Kyungsoo has never been so proactive with him before.

They enter Junmyeon’s house, and several fires have been put out in the living room, which is where Junmyeon cooks his potions. All the cooking of food, on the other hand, is done in Yixing’s house. It’s an arrangement that works out well. Even though it’s all ash and no flame, Baekhyun huddles closer to Kyungsoo, who takes him to an inner room he has never been in before.

Every nerve in Baekhyun’s being is screaming that they can’t be going through Junmyeon’s rooms when he’s not there, no matter how close Junmyeon and Kyungsoo are. It’s  _ Junmyeon _ they’re dealing with. “I- I don’t think we’re allowed here,” says Baekhyun, and his voice sounds small in the big room. It might be the biggest room in the house. It’s some sort of meeting room, with a low table lined by chairs. A bowl of potpourri stands at each end of the table. It’s probably passed around during meetings, and the witches can take handfuls or pick out bits for their own spellwork. There’s also a tray of sundried berries.

“You can tell he’s going to have a meeting here soon,” says Baekhyun, licking his lips, “we should really go.”

“First let’s finish what we came here for,” says Kyungsoo scrabbling on the ground next to the table. He fiddles with what Baekhyun takes to be a stick before he realises it’s a long wooden key, and there’s a tiny lock on the floorboard. Kyungsoo raises the floorboard- but it’s not a loose floorboard.

It’s a trapdoor. Baekhyun says, “What’s down there?”

“Come look.”

With hesitant steps, Baekhyun goes to stand next to Kyungsoo. He can’t see anything down there. It’s too dark. He crouches as well, peering into the darkness.

Suddenly he lurches forward. He can barely process that Kyungsoo pushed him before he hits the ground and the window of light overhead disappears. It was a very short fall so thankfully he isn’t hurt. Baekhyun tries to stand, but the ceiling is too low, he hits his head immediately. He sits on what feels like stone and stretches his hand up, touching the ceiling.

“Kyungsoo!” he shouts, “Kyungsoo, let me out!” He punches the ceiling, dull thuds. Either Kyungsoo ignores him, or he’s already gone. After yelling himself raw, Baekhyun curls up, holding his wrist, which is swollen and tender with pain. With panicked whimpers, he feels along the ceiling for a loose floorboard. But apart from the bit of the ceiling where the trapdoor is, the rest of it has a layer of wainscoting, so Baekhyun can’t reach the floorboards.

He decides he’ll try to rattle the trapdoor again once his fist hurts a little less, but at that moment he hears the thundering of footsteps and the creak of chairs drawn. Two chairs. Maybe that meeting Baekhyun predicted is going to start. Whatever it is, there are people here. He could be let out of here.

He readies himself to knock with the other fist, the unhurt one, but then he hears Junmyeon’s voice. “What brings you here, Prince? Didn’t we agree that we are never to communicate directly?”

“There’s no point anymore,” says the Prince’s voice. Baekhyun curls up in the dark, heartbeat loud in his ears. He abandons his plan of signalling his distress in all of a moment. He is afraid of Junmyeon. This dark little space seems safer, at least for now, if it really is the Prince that Junmyeon is meeting with. Junmyeon told Baekhyun to never show himself to the Prince until Junmyeon tells him to. Baekhyun does not want to find out how Junmyeon will react if he messes up.

“The King knows,” says the Prince. “He knows that we’ve been hand in glove, Junmyeon. He told me to bring you to him when not even Siwon could, he’s obviously onto us. And he told Yoonah to stop visiting me.”

“How did Yoonah respond to that? Do you want to take her out of the castle? If she isn’t safe there we can arrange for her to live in the forest.”

“No, the King wants her to continue attending to him, and if she refuses that… that won’t be good. As for how she responded, she said she tried to come off as natural as possible. She said she’d stop attending to me and would find another dancing girl to take my place.”

“You’d better kill him quickly,” says Junmyeon.

“I wish it was that easy,” says the Prince bitterly. “We can’t rely on our plan anymore. If the King knows that we’ve been conspiring, it’s because one of my men must have betrayed me. I have to act quickly, yes, but I have to act alone.”

“I don’t think you should,” says Junmyeon. “It’s true that your men can’t be trusted anymore, but it’d be useless for you to try to take the King on alone. We’d like to help, too. Then you’d stand a chance. And we really want you to be successful in taking over the throne.”

“How, though? You can’t just storm the castle.”

“Your army’s artifacts haven’t worn down yet, so we can’t. But we could sneak someone in. Have you considered an attack from the inside?”

The Prince’s voice raises in excitement. “I  _ have _ been considering exactly that. Can you recommend me a trustworthy assassin?”

“I’ll look into it, I promise,” says Junmyeon. “I’m glad to see we’re thinking along the same lines.”

“It’s the only line left to us,” says the Prince. “Well, I suppose I should leave now.”

“Where are you going? Back to the palace?”

“Where else do I have to go?” says the Prince wryly.

“The King now knows that you plan to kill him. You could pretend that you’re after me, and camp out here in the woods, perhaps,” suggests Junmyeon.

“That’s too risky. I’ll be far from the palace, far from the goings-on in court; I want to be in the know at all times.”

Junmyeon hums thoughtfully.

“Oh, and another thing.” There’s a creak, as though the Prince leaned forward in his chair. “I… had something stolen from the castle. Something of mine.”

“What was it?”

“A pot of ashes.”

“The ashes of a witch?” says Junmyeon shrewdly, as though he doesn’t know what Jongin is talking about.

“Yes. I won’t tell you who the witch was, because it doesn’t matter, but I suspected my father at first. He hates that kind of sentimentality in me. But… well, it could have been a witch. One of yours might have already infiltrated the castle, Junmyeon.”

“I see…” Junmyeon says softly. “Interesting. I don’t know what purpose it would serve a witch, if it was a witch, to nick your prized ashes-”

“I don’t know how your lot’s magic works, Junmyeon, but it’s possible the ashes were used for some sort of ritual or spell. Just my guess. This is no accusation, mind you, just a possibility that I would be happy if you explored. If you find that it wasn’t a witch who was responsible after all, I’ll be relieved, nothing more.”

“I doubt one of my witches could have pulled something like this without me getting wind of it, but I’ll certainly check,” says Junmyeon. “I don’t suppose you can mention the matter to your father? Gauge something from his reaction?”

Jongin snorts. “I’d be exposing myself as weak and sentimental again, and anyway, my father does not give anything away until he plans to. He made that much clear to me today.”

The rest of their conversation goes along the same lines: that the King knows, or is aware of, more than they think he does; and since they don’t know how much the King knows, they will now have to work in absolute stealth. Two sets of footsteps knock away towards the door, and one set returns; Junmyeon just saw the Prince out. A chair creaks as Junmyeon sits again, with a heavy sigh. Jongdae enters after a few minutes and Junmyeon orders him to send word to Selah that she must be on her guard in the palace, for the King might know of her allegiance. Baekhyun’s heart thuds in the dark. He shouldn’t have listened in on the meeting, but he did, and he doesn’t know how Junmyeon will take that, but most of all the urgency of the assassination mission hits him like never before. The King knows that Junmyeon is in the woods. Then the King probably knows about the rest of them too, and that puts them in danger. They have to be the ones to strike first.

♛

After it goes quiet, Baekhyun is terrified. There is nothing to listen to through the trapdoor anymore, no distractions. He has never been in a place so dark before, a place consumed by darkness until there is nothing else. Hunger, thirst, anger, loneliness, anything else he could feel is swallowed by his fear. He curls up, weeping feebly, chest heaving with dread until it’s difficult to breathe. Even in this state he is unwilling to get Junmyeon’s attention. He decides to believe that Kyungsoo will let him out soon. Once the others realise he is missing and begin to wonder where he is, Kyungsoo will have no choice.

♛

A day later, Junmyeon sees light issuing from the gaps in a floorboard. He unlocks it and lifts it to see Baekhyun, curled up into a ball of blazing light. He is almost afraid to touch him, even though he knows Baekhyun’s light has no heat. Hesitantly, he places a hand on Baekhyun’s shoulder. Baekhyun lifts his head and screams, and then his screams turn to sobs when Junmyeon hoists him up and murmurs, “Why are you crying, child, when you should be rejoicing?” and then softer, holding him to his chest and stroking his hair, “The dark should be the least of your fears.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> yell your thoughts at me! i need something to drive me through the process of writing this troublesome dragon of a fic. it's a monster, but it's supposed to be lovable...  
> oh, i have a [twitter](https://twitter.com/trashsshi). and a[curiouscat](https://curiouscat.qa/trashsshi).  
> 


End file.
